VANGUARD 

OF 

AMERICAN 

VOLUNTEERS 



EDWIN W. MORSE 




Class 1.-1 la 1 °\ 

Book i_i 



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CCHOUGflT DEPOSOi 



THE VANGUARD OF 
AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS 



THE VANGUARD OF 
AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS 

IN THE FIGHTING LINES 

AND IN HUMANITARIAN SERVICE 

AUGUST, 1914— APRIL, 1917 



BY 

EDWIN W. MORSE 

AUTHOR OF " CAUSES AND EFFECTS IN AMERICAN BISTORT ' 



ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1918 



vv 



b 



COPTSIOHT, 1918, BT 

CHARLES SCRIBNERS SONS 



Published October, 1918 



NOV 15 1918 




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c. _ ^5 1) h r>n-7 



TO THE MEMORY 

OF THOSE HEROIC AMERICAN YOUTHS 

WHO BY THEIR SELF-SACRIFICING DEVOTION 

POINTED OUT THE PATH 

OF DUTY AND HONOR 

TO THEIR FELLOW COUNTRYMEN 



PAGE 



CONTENTS 

I. Introductory 3 



PART I 

IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 
II. William Thaw, Late of Yale . . . . 

III. Morlae's Picture of the Legion . . 

IV. Henry Farnsworth, Lover of Books 
V. A Descendant of Citizen Genet . . 

VI. Alan Seeger, Poet of the Legion . 
VII. Victor Chapman as a Legionnaire 



13 
21 

27 
37 
50 
66 



PART II 

WITH FAMOUS BRITISH REGIMENTS 

VIII. John P. Poe, of the First Black Watch 75 

IX. Dillwyn P. Starr, of the Coldstream 

Guards 83 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

PART III 

THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN SERVIA 

PAGE 

X. Dr. Ryan Under Fire at Belgrade . 95 

XI. Fighting Typhus at Gevgelia .... 99 

XII. Conquering the Plague of Typhus . 106 

PART IV 
AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

XIII. Richard Norton's Motor Ambulance 

Corps 115 

XIV. The Work of Mr. Andrew's Corps . 129 

XV. The Death of Richard Hall .... 134 

XVI. Around Bois-le-Pretre, the "Forest 

of Death" 139 

XVII. In the Great Battle for Verdun . . 148 

XVIII. William Barber's Medaille Militaire 152 

XIX. Two Yale Men at Verdun 15? 

XX. Henry Suckle y Killed by a Bomb . . 161 

XXI. A Princeton Man's Experiences ... 165 



CONTENTS ix 

PART V 

RELIEF WORK LN BELGIUM AND IN NORTHERN FRANCE 

PAGE 

XXII. Herbert Hoover and "Engineering 

Efficiency" 175 

XXIII. American Volunteers in Field Ser- 
vice 181 

XXTV. American Idealism and Humor . . 186 

XXV. Narratives of Princeton Men . . 192 

XXVI. Effect on the Americans of German 

Methods 200 

PART VI 

AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

XXVII. The Lafayette, or American, Esca- 

drille 205 

XXVin. The First American Aviator to Fall 217 

XXIX. Kiffin Rockwell's Last Combat . . 225 

XXX. Norman Prince Killed by an Acci- 
dent 231 

XXXI. James McConnell, Historian . . . 239 

XXXII. Genet in the American Escadrille . 249 



x CONTENTS 

PAGE 

XXXIII. Major Lufbery, Ace of American 257 

ACES 

XXXIV. Major Thaw, Pioneer American Avi- 

ator 269 



Index of Names 279 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The American Ambulance Field Service Frontispiece 

FACING PAOK 

Members of the Foreign Legion on leave in Paris, July 

7, 1915 38 

Doctor Richard P. Strong 108 

Richard Hall 136 

The great central clothing supply station in Brussels . . 178 

Major Raoul Lufbery 266 



PUBLISHERS' NOTE 

The Publishers desire to express their acknowledgment of the cour- 
tesy of various other publishing houses for the privilege of including 
selections from their books in the following pages. The complete list 
of books from which quotations have been used, which will be of value 
to the reader who may wish to pursue any one of these subjects in more 
detail, is as follows: 

"Letters of Henry Weston Farnsworth of the Foreign Legion." (Pri- 
vately Printed.) 

"War Letters of Edmond Genet." (Charles Scribner's Sods.) 

"Victor Chapman's Letters from France." (Macmillan Co.) 

"The War Story of Dillwyn Parrish Starr." (Privately Printed.) 

"Letters and Diary of Alan Seeger." (Charles Scribner's Sons.) 

"Poems of Alan Seeger." (Charles Scribner's Sons.) 

"Harvard Volunteers in Europe." (Harvard University Press.) 

"Friends of France." (Houghton Mifflin Co.) 

"Ambulance No. 10." By Leslie Buswell. (Houghton Mifflin Co.) 

"With a Military Ambulance in France, 1914-'15." By Clarence V. S. 
Mitchell. (Privately Printed.) 

"Journal from Our Legation in Belgium." By Hugh Gibson. (Double- 
day, Page & Co.) 

"Fighting Starvation in Belgium." By Vernon Kellogg. (Doubleday, 
Page & Co.) 

"Headquarters Nights." By Vernon Kellogg. (Atlantic Monthly 
Press.) 

"Flying for France." By James R. McConnell. (Doubleday, Page & 
Co.) 

"With the French Flying Corps." By Carroll D. Winslow. (Charles 
Scribner's Sons.) 

"Norman Prince." Edited by George F. Babbitt. (Houghton Mifflin 
Co.) 

Selections have also been used from various periodicals, in several 
of which original publications were made, and to which credit has in- 
variably been given in the teit. 



INTRODUCTORY 



INTRODUCTORY 

NO historian of the future will be able to 
ignore the important part which that 
small but heroic band, the Vanguard of Ameri- 
can Volunteers, played in the great war to 
make the world safe for democracy. For it 
was they who were the voluntary leaders along 
the path which the people and the government 
of the United States, after more than two years 
and a half of hesitation, were to follow; and it 
was they who, by the inspiring example of their 
self-sacrificing devotion to the cause of the 
Allies, were largely instrumental in creating 
and in crystallizing public opinion among their 
own countrymen in favor of the entrance of 
the United States into the war. 

A dozen volumes such as this would not 
suffice to give even the barest outlines of the 
records and achievements of these American 
Volunteers. All that can be attempted here 
is to gather together a few typical instances of 



4 INTRODUCTORY 

their devotion to a high sense of duty in what- 
ever branches of the service they found them- 
selves. Some of them enlisted under the in- 
spiring leadership of Mr. Hoover for relief work 
in stricken Belgium and in devastated northern 
France; others, under the flag of the American 
Red Cross, carried surgical and medical help 
to invaded and plague-stricken Servia and to 
other points; others became drivers of ambu- 
lances over dangerous roads from the postes de 
secours to hospitals in the rear; still others, 
eager to make their influence felt more directly, 
joined the Foreign Legion of France or other 
French or British regiments; while a handful 
of the more daring spirits entered the French 
flying corps and formed the nucleus of what 
later was to become the Lafayette Escadrille. 

Two aspects of this exodus of hundreds of 
young Americans to the service of the Allies 
are of especial interest — first, the motives that 
lay behind their action, and, secondly, the 
effects of their participation in the great con- 
flict. A deep humanitarian impulse gave quick 
response to Mr. Hoover's appeal for Americans 
to go to the assistance of the Belgians, and was 



INTRODUCTORY 5 

of course the force behind all of the activities 
of the American Red Cross. A pure love of 
adventure, however, an irresistible desire to 
take some active part in the greatest war in 
the history of the world, was without doubt a 
compelling motive in many instances. It was 
with this desire that scores of young college 
men became ambulance drivers in France. 
Many of them, however, after witnessing the 
effects of the German methods of waging war 
and the heroic sacrifices which the French were 
making in defense of their fair land, sought en- 
trance into branches of the French or English 
service where they could make their presence 
felt to greater military advantage. It was 
largely, no doubt, with the same desire to take 
active part in a great adventure that young 
Americans by the hundreds, from all parts of 
the United States, swarmed across the Canadian 
border to join the regiments forming and train- 
ing in the early months of the war. 

The figures, however, that stand out from all 
the rest are those of the small group of young 
Americans who, through love of France and 
admiration for the French, or through devotion 



6 INTRODUCTORY 

to the high ideals of freedom and liberty for 
which both France and England were pouring 
out their best blood, gave their services and, 
in not a few instances, made the supreme sacri- 
fice of even life itself, as a measure of their de- 
votion. It is true that the numbers of these 
young Americans were few, and the effect of 
their presence in the firing-lines was, in a mili- 
tary sense, insignificant and altogether negligi- 
ble. But the influence of their spirit and of 
their example upon public opinion in the 
United States in the first two years and a half 
of the war was beyond all calculation. Scorn- 
ing neutrality and regarding it as the refuge of 
the unintelligent, the irresolute and the timid 
among their own countrymen, they threw them- 
selves into the conflict on the side of the Allies 
with heart and soul aflame, as if determined to 
prove that there were at least a few Americans 
who from the very beginning understood to the 
full the moral as well as the political issues in- 
volved in the mighty struggle. And, although 
they were only a handful, they succeeded by 
their zeal and their energy in keeping alive 
in the breasts of the Frenchmen and English- 



INTRODUCTORY 7 

men by the side of whom they were fighting 
the hope that some day the government and 
the people of the United States would see the 
causes and the possible consequences of the 
great conflict eye to eye with their own view 
of the issues involved. One has only to read 
the address of the French surgeon-in-chief at 
the burial of that gallant Dartmouth boy, 
Richard Hall, or the letter of the colonel com- 
manding the Coldstream Guards to the par- 
ents of Lieutenant Dillwyn Starr, to see this 
hope reflected. 

The great majority of these young volun- 
teers were college-bred men of the best Ameri- 
can type. The old law of noblesse oblige pointed 
the way to duty unerringly, and they followed 
it unhesitatingly. Only a few days before the 
United States Government declared war against 
Germany, in April, 1917, there were no fewer 
than 533 graduates and undergraduates of Har- 
vard, for example, in some branch of service in 
Europe, either on the firing-lines, or in Belgium, 
or in connection with hospital and ambulance 
work; and the deaths of Harvard men in service 
up to that time had numbered twenty-seven. 



8 INTRODUCTORY 

Many other universities and colleges, from Bow- 
doin in the East to Stanford in the West, were 
equally well represented in proportion to their 
numbers. These were the young men who by 
faithful service were winning what Owen Wister, 
in his preface to "The Aftermath of Battle," 
calls "the spurs of moral knighthood." "And 
this host — for host it is — of Americans," added 
Mr. Wister, "thus dedicated to service in the 
Great Convulsion, helps to remove the stain 
which was cast over all Americans when we 
were invited to be neutral in our opinions while 
Democracy in Europe was being strangled to 
death." 

The presence in the danger zones of these 
American volunteers and the occasional death 
of one of them in the performance of duty, 
made a deep impression in France as well as in 
America. The people of France, as Mr. Chap- 
man points out in his preface to his son Victor's 
"Letters," were "living in a state of sacrificial 
enthusiasm for which history shows no parallel. 
Their gratitude to those who espoused their 
cause was such as to magnify and exalt hero- 
ism." The prime minister of France, M. Briand, 



INTRODUCTORY 9 

spoke of young Chapman, who was the first of 
the American aviators to fall in battle with an 
enemy air-ship, as "the living symbol of Ameri- 
can idealism," adding: "France will never forget 
this new comradeship, this evidence of a devo- 
tion to a common ideal." 

No one gave more effective expression to this 
"new comradeship" than Alan Seeger, whose 
"Poems," published in 1916, enabled thousands 
of readers to find their own souls in the reflec- 
tion of that of the Poet of the Foreign Legion, 

Who, not unmindful of the antique debt, 
Came back the generous path of Lafayette, 

and gallantly kept his "rendezvous with death" 
on the blood-soaked fields of Belloy-en-Santerre. 



PART I 
IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 



II 

WILLIAM THAW, LATE OF YALE 

TO the young Americans with French sym- 
pathies who, at the beginning of the war, 
were eager to get into the real fighting as 
quickly as possible, the Foreign Legion offered 
the readiest means. Every able-bodied man 
who was willing to fight for France was wel- 
comed as a brother to its ranks, whatever his 
nationality and without regard to his record. 
For scores of years the Legion had been famous, 
even notorious, as the refuge of soldiers of for- 
tune, criminals, scapegraces and adventurers of 
all types — of all the outcasts of society in fact. 
This unenviable reputation was no obstacle, 
however, in the way of the young Americans 
who were anxious to get into the fighting-lines 
by the easiest and quickest means possible. 
They were willing to take their chances. 

Their experiences varied because the regi- 
ments differed greatly in the character of the 
men. To Farnsworth and Morlae they were 

13 



14 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

picturesque and interesting. Chapman found 
himself among "the scum of the Paris streets," 
and doubted if six months' training would make 
them fit for active service. That some of the 
regiments failed to conform in character to the 
traditions of the Legion may easily have been 
the case, if Genet was correct in his statement 
of January, 1916, that there had been about 
48,000 volunteers enrolled in that body since 
the war began, of whom there were then only 
about 5,000 left fit for service. 

One of the first of the American youths to 
join this famous organization was William 
Thaw, of Pittsburgh, who had been a member 
of the class of 1915 at Yale. As was the case 
with several other Americans, Thaw was des- 
tined to win renown not in the Legion but in 
the flying corps. His experiences in the Legion, 
however, were described in his letters to his 
family, which were printed in the Yale Alumni 
Weekly, in such a racy, breezy manner and with 
such a genuinely American sense of boyish 
humor, that some selections from them are well 
worth quoting. Incidentally it may be noted 
that at the very beginning, when practically 



WILLIAM THAW, LATE OF YALE 15 

all the rest of the world was in a state of more 
or less bewildered amazement at what was 
taking place in Belgium, this Yale youth grasped 
the essential, fundamental fact that this was 
to be a world-conflict between civilization and 
barbarism. 

Under date of August 30, 1914, Thaw wrote: 

I am going to take a part, however small, 
in the greatest and probably last, war in his- 
tory, which has apparently developed into a 
fight of civilization against barbarism. That 
last reason may sound a bit grand and dramatic, 
but you would quite agree if you could hear the 
tales of French, Belgian and English soldiers 
who have come back here from the front. . . . 

Talk about your college education, it isn't 
in it with what a fellow can learn being thrown 
in with a bunch of men like this ! There are 
about 1200 here (we sleep on straw on the floor 
of the Ecole Professionel pour Jeunes Filles) 
and in our section (we sleep and drill by sec- 
tions) there is some mixture, including a Colum- 
bia Professor (called "Shorty"), an old tutor 
who has numerous Ph.D.s, M.A.s, etc., a 
preacher from Georgia, a pro. gambler from 
Missouri, a former light-weight second rater, 
two dusky gentlemen, one from Louisiana and 
the other from Ceylon, a couple of hard guys 
from the Gopher Gang of lower N. Y., a Swede, 
a Norwegian, a number of Poles, Brazilians, 



16 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

Belgians, etc. So you see it's some bunch ! I 
sleep between the prize-fighter and a chap who 
used to work for the Curtiss Co. As for the 
daily routine it reminds me of Hill School, and 
then some; only instead of getting demerits 
for being naughty, you get short rations and 
prison. 

Early in September the detachment was 
transferred to Toulouse, where it was joined by 
500 veterans from the Legion in Africa. Nearly 
a month was spent in Toulouse in drilling and 
hardening the men for front-line work. Thaw 
was made a student-corporal. He wrote: 

It is not a very exalted position, as you com- 
mand only seven men. But it was a starter, 
and meant four cents a day instead of one, 
better shoes, and the power to put the guys you 
don't like in prison for four days instead of 
having to lick them personally ! But of course 
now that we'll be with veterans there will have 
to be a lot of officers killed off before I get an- 
other chance. But it was a rare sight to see 
me drilling the awkward squad to which I was 
assigned. (A somewhat doubtful compliment 
to my abilities as a commander.) And that 
squad was some awkward. To add to my diffi- 
culties there were in it a chap from Flanders 
who spoke neither French nor English, a Rus- 
sian who didn't speak French, a Frenchman 



WILLIAM THAW, LATE OF YALE 17 

who didn't speak English and some Americans 
and English with various linguistic accomplish- 
ments. It took me two hours to get them to 
obey about twenty simple commands with any 
sort of precision. But it was a lot of fun, even 
if I did lose half my voice and about 3 kilos. 

Finally, early in October, Thaw's company 
was moved north to Camp de Mailly, Chalons- 
sur-Marne. This paragraph from a letter dated 
October 4 indicates the nature of Thaw's work 
as a scout: 

Yesterday I got a new job, being one of the 
two scouts or eclaireurs de marche, for our squad 
of 17 men. The other is a big Servian, who is 
beside me in ranks and who was wounded twice 
in the Balkan War. It's some job; you have 
to beat it off through the country, when your 
company is on the march, walk about three 
kilometres over rough ground, and, as far as 
I can see, get shot at, which gallant deed proves 
that the enemy are near and warns your com- 
rades. The sergeant (he's always kidding us) 
consoled us by saying that he chose only men 
of great "sang froid" and skill with the rifle, and 
only the best marchers, whereupon I offered him 
a cigarette. 

The cross-country "military marches," each 
man carrying the official equipment weighing 



18 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

120 pounds,* were severe tests of the endurance 
of the men: 

I was agreeably surprised to find that I got 
less tired than most, and didn't even mind carry- 
ing an extra gun the last five kilos. It's just 
a matter of getting used to it; but, take it from 
me, in comparison a game of football is almost 
a joke, for you don't get a rest every fifteen 
minutes, and a game doesn't last seven hours. 

By the middle of October Thaw's battalion 
was in the front-line trenches. In the mean- 
time his skill with the rifle had won for him pro- 
motion to soldier of the first class, with a red 
stripe on his sleeve. He found the life monoto- 
nous and disappointing, however. • Under date 
of November 27 he wrote: 



War is wretched and quite uninteresting. 
Wish I were back dodging street cars on Broad- 
way for excitement. Am that tired of being 
shot at ! Got hit in the cap and bayonet — Do 
you mind? Have been in the trenches now 
nearly six weeks. Haven't washed for twenty 
days. Expect to get a ten days' rest after an- 
other two weeks. 

* This weight was confirmed in a later letter from Thaw. 



WILLIAM THAW, LATE OF YALE 19 

A month later he summarized his experiences 
thus: 

We didn't make an attack and were attacked 
only once, and I doubt that, for I didn't see any 
Germans. I didn't even shoot when they gave 
the order "fire at will," and when I told the 
excited, spluttering little sergeant that there 
was nothing to shoot at (it was very dark) he 
said, shoot anyway, which I did at the German 
trenches 800 metres away, for by that time 
they were replying, in astonishment, no doubt, 
to our fire, and their bullets were snipping 
through the trees at us — which is my idea of 
some battle. 

The humorous side of one episode appealed 
strongly to this American youth: 

Another very exciting experience, of which 
I'd nearly forgotten to tell you, was when one 
night we received "sure dope" that there would 
be an attack, six of us, under the American 
corporal, Morlae, went out as an advance 
guard into an open trench 100 metres in front 
of the main line, the idea being that while the 
Germans were killing us off the others would 
be warned and have time to get ready. It was 
a peachy idea, but "les Bodies " never showed 
up, and the "exciting experience" consisted in 
standing for thirteen hours in three inches of 
water and nearly dying of fright when a dozen 



20 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

cows came browsing across the meadows in per- 
fect skirmish order. " C'est terrible, la guerre," 
as we Frenchmen say." 

A month later Thaw was transferred at his 
request to the French aviation service. 



Ill 

MORLAE'S PICTURE OF THE LEGION 

TWO days after the war began E. Morlae, 
the American corporal referred to by 
Thaw, left Los Angeles, California, for Paris. 
Born in California, Morlae was of French par- 
entage, his father having served in the French 
army in the War of 1870. On arriving in Paris 
he enlisted in the Foreign Legion, and his 
father's record, with his general familiarity with 
military matters and his command of French, 
soon secured for him promotion to the rank of 
corporal. After serving in the Legion for more 
than a year he returned to the United States, 
wounded in the neck and knee. 

Morlae contributed to the Atlantic Monthly 
for March, 1916, a description of the Legion's 
share in the battle of Champagne, the last week 
in the previous September, which was remarka- 
ble for its vividness and its graphic power. 
The scene of that portion of the battle which 

Morlae described was from Souain to Navarin, 

21 



22 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

where lay the immediate objective of the at- 
tack, the little fort of Navarin. This objective 
was attained, but at a heavy cost of lives. Of 
Morlae's section of sixty men only twelve sur- 
vived, several of those being severely wounded. 
In the following paragraph from his Atlantic 
Monthly paper, Morlae described the honors 
that were paid to the Legion before and after 
this battle, and gave the reasons therefor: 

One day during the latter part of August, 
1915, my regiment, the 2me. Etranger (Foreign 
Legion), passed in review before the President 
of the French Republic and the Commander-in- 
chief of her armies, General Joffre. On that 
day after twelve months of fighting, the regi- 
ment was presented by President Poincare with 
a battle-flag. The occasion marked the admis- 
sion of the Legion Etrangere to equal footing 
with regiments of the line. Two months later 
— it was October 28 — the remnants of this regi- 
ment were paraded through the streets of Paris, 
and, with all military honors, this same battle- 
flag was taken across the Seine to the Hotel des 
Invalides. There it was decorated with the 
Cross of the Legion of Honor and, with reverent 
ceremony, was placed between the flag of the 
cuirassiers who died at Reichshofen and the 
equally famous standard which the Garibaldians 
bore in 1870-71. The flag lives on. The regi- 
ment has ceased to exist. 



MORLAE'S PICTURE OF THE LEGION 23 

To the men of the Legion, which survived 
this blow as it had others, these honors, as 
Morlae points out, meant much. For they 
were no longer to be classed as pariahs and out- 
casts, as they had always been. Of the per- 
sonnel of the Legion and of the reasons for the 
devotion of the Legionnaires to France, Morlae 
said: 

Of the Legion I can tell you at first hand. It 
is a story of adventurers, of criminals, of fugi- 
tives from justice. Some of them are drunkards, 
some thieves; and some with the mark of Cain 
upon them find others to keep them company. 
They are men I knew the worst of. And yet 
I am proud of them — proud of having been one 
of them; very proud of having commanded some 
of them. 

It is all natural enough. Most men who 
had come to know them as I have would feel as 
I do. You must reckon the good with the evil. 
You must remember their comradeship, their 
esprit de corps, their pathetic eagerness to serve 
France, the sole country which had offered them 
asylum, the country which had shown them 
confidence, mothered them and placed them on 
an equal footing with her own sons. These 
things mean something to a man who has led 
the life of an outcast, and the Legionnaires have 
proved their loyalty to France many times 
over. . . . 



24 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

In my own section there were men of all 
races and all nationalities. There were Russians 
and Turks, an Anamite and a Hindu. There 
were Frenchmen from God knows where. There 
was a German, God only knows why. There 
were Bulgars, Servians, Greeks, Negroes, an 
Italian and a Fiji Islander, fresh from an Oxford 
education, — a silent man of whom it was whis- 
pered that he had once been an archbishop, — 
three Arabians and a handful of Americans who 
cared little for the quiet life. 

Of this group of Americans Morlae wrote as 
follows: 

But even the Americans were not all of one 
stripe. J. J. Carey had been a newspaper 
artist, and Bob Scanlon, a burly negro, an artist 
with his fist in the squared ring. Alan Seeger 
had something of the poet in him. Dennis 
Dowd was a lawyer; Edwin Boligny a lovable 
adventurer. There was D. W. King, the sprig 
of a well-known family. William Thaw, of 
Pittsburgh, started with us, though he joined 
the Flying Corps later on. Then there were 
James Bach, of New York, B. S. Hall, who hailed 
from Kentucky, Professor Ohlinger, of Colum- 
bia, Phelizot, who had shot enough big game in 
Africa to feed the regiment. There were Del- 
penche and Capdevielle, and little Trinkard, 
from New York. Bob Subiron came, I im- 
agine, from the States in general, for he had 
been a professional automobile racer. The 



MORLAE'S PICTURE OF THE LEGION 25 

Rockville brothers, journalists, signed on from 
Georgia; and last, though far from least, was 
Fried rich Wilhelm Zinn, from Battle Creek, 
Michigan. 

The King referred to by Morlae was David 
W. King, a Harvard undergraduate of the class 
of 1916, whom Victor Chapman found in July, 
1915, in a village in Alsace "rolling in luxuries," 
"smoking imported cigarettes and refusing to 
make a row even when the bill was three times 
what it should be." 

In a letter which was reprinted in the Harvard 
Alumni Bulletin, King described how Zinn, 
who had become his best friend, was wounded 
a few months later: 

The night of the 8th [of October, 1915] we 
came up here. It's the deuce of a place. We 
work on the front line all night, and they amuse 
themselves by dropping shrapnel and "mar- 
mites" into the working parties. During the 
day we are supposed to rest, but there are bat- 
teries all around us, and the consequence is 
that the Boches are always feeling around for 
them, and the guns themselves make such a 
fiendish racket we are almost deaf. To make 
things more cheerful, as we were going to work 
a shell burst near my best friend (F. W. Zinn) 
who was walking just ahead of me and he got 



26 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

a piece in the side. It did not penetrate, but 
it made a bad contusion just under his heart, 
and I am afraid it smashed some ribs. There 
were no Red Cross workers near by, so I had to 
take him back. He could hardly breathe when 
I got him to the "poste de secours." Lucky 
devil ! He will get a month's rest, but I miss 
him like anything, as friends are pretty scarce 
around here. 



IV 
HENRY FARNSWORTH, LOVER OF BOOKS 

ONE young American volunteer in the 
Foreign Legion was killed in the battle 
for the Fortin de Navarin at the end of Sep- 
tember, 1915. He was Henry Weston Farns- 
worth, of Dedham, Massachusetts, a graduate 
of Groton and of Harvard, of the class of 1912. 
His tastes were bookish, musical and artistic. 
Burton, Dostoievski, Tolstoi, Gogol, Ibsen and 
Balzac were favorites with him, although his 
studies in literature covered a much wider 
field — the English classics as well as the modern 
continental writers. After he was graduated 
he spent the summer in Europe; visiting Vienna, 
Budapesth, Constantinople, Odessa, Moscow, 
and St. Petersburg, revelling in the historical 
associations, the art collections and the music 
of these cities, and making odd friends here and 
there, as was his wont, and studying the people. 
His curiosity was insatiable, particularly as 
regards the Oriental peoples and the Russians. 

27 



28 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

When the European War broke out Farns- 
worth was in the city of Mexico, whither he had 
gone when the United States Government sent 
troops to Vera Cruz. In the meantime he had 
had some experience as a newspaper correspon- 
dent and reporter for the Providence Journal 
and had published a book, "The Log of a 
Would-be War Correspondent," describing his 
experiences and observations in the Balkan 
War in the autumn of 1912, the fascination of 
which he could not resist. Returning home 
from Mexico, he sailed for England in October, 
1914, with no intention of taking active part in 
the war, but with the desire to become an on- 
looker, in the hope that he might write some- 
thing about the great conflict that would be 
worth while. The air of London and Paris was 
full of military projects, and he was tempted in 
various directions. Finally, after a period of 
hesitation and uncertainty, he entered the For- 
eign Legion early in January. 

From the "Letters of Henry Weston Farns- 
worth of the Foreign Legion" to the members 
of his family, which have been privately printed 
by his father, William Farnsworth, it is possible 
to follow him during the nine succeeding months. 



HENRY FARNSWORTH, LOVER OF BOOKS 29 

He was under no illusions about the Germans. 
"Mad with envy," he writes, "is how they 
strike me. At the expression ' English Channel ' 
they froth at the mouth." And his admiration 
for their Gallic adversaries was deep. "Noth- 
ing," he says, "can over-express the quiet for- 
titude of the French people." 

Farnsworth, who, as we have seen, had a 
decided taste for odd characters, found his 
associates in his company of the Legion inter- 
esting studies. Under the date of January 9, 
1915, he wrote: 

In the first place there is no tough element 
at all. Many of the men are educated, and the 
very lowest is of the high class workman type. 
In my room, for instance, there are "Le Petit 
Pere" Uhlin, an old Alsatian, who has already 
served fourteen years in the Legion in China 
and Morocco; the Corporal Lebrun, a Socialist 
well known in his own district; Engler, a Swiss 
cotton-broker from Havre; Donald Campbell, a 
newspaper man and short story writer, who will 
not serve in the English army because his 
family left England in 1745, with the exception 
of his father, who was a captain in the Royal 
Irish Fusileers; Sukuna, a Fijian student at 
Oxford, black as ink; Hath, a Dane, over six 
feet, whom Campbell aptly calls "The Blonde 
Beast" (vide "Zarathustra"); Von somebody, 



30 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

another Dane, very small and young; Bastados, 
a Swiss carpenter, born and bred in the Alps, 
who sings — when given half a litre of canteen 
wine — far better than most comic opera stars 
and who at times does the Ranz des V aches so 
that even Petit Pere Uhlin claps; the brigadier 
Mussorgsky, cousin descendant of the com- 
poser, a little Russian; two or three Polish Jews, 
nondescript Belgians, Greeks, Roumanians, etc. 
I already have enough to write a long (ten 
thousand word) article, and at the end of the 
campaign can write a book truly interesting. 

The more he saw of it the more picturesque 
and fascinating Farnsworth found the new life 
into which he had plunged. He liked the men 
and the spirit that prevailed in the Legion: 

I am thoroughly at home by this time and 
good friends with everyone in the company, 
even including a Belgian whom I was forced to 
lick thoroughly. The two great Legion march- 
ing songs, "Car nous sommes tous les freres" 
and the old, the finest marching song in the 
world, 

Soldats de la Legion 

La Legion Etrangere, 
N'ayant pas de patrie, 
La France est notre mere, 

are quite true at bottom, at least in the 15th 
company. 



HENRY FARNSWORTH, LOVER OF BOOKS 31 

In course of time Farnsworth's regiment 
was moved to the front in northern France, 
and early in March he was writing from the 
trenches. The sector was quiet and little of im- 
portance happened except an occasional bom- 
bardment or some desultory rifle firing. He 
was often on night patrol in No Man's Land: 

There is a certain fascination in all this, 
dull though it may seem. The patrol is selected 
in the afternoon. At sunset we meet to make 
the plans and tell each man his duty; then at 
dark our pockets are filled with cartridges, a 
drawn bayonet in the belt, and our magazines 
loaded to the brim. We go along the boyau to 
the petit poste from which it is decided to leave. 
All along the line the sentinels wish us good 
luck and a safe return. In the petit poste we 
clamp on the bayonets, blow noses, clear throats, 
and prepare for three hours of utter silence. 
At a word from the chief we form in line in the 
prearranged order. The sentries wish us luck 
for the last time, and the chief jumps up on the 
edge of the trenches and begins to work his 
way quickly through the barbed wire. Once 
outside he disappears in the beet weeds and one 
after another we follow. 

Then begins the crawl to the appointed 
spot. We go slowly with frequent halts. Every 
sound must be analyzed. On the occasion of 
the would-be ambush, I admit I went to sleep 



32 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

after awhile in the warm fresh clover where we 
lay. It was the Adjutant himself who woke 
me up with a slight hiss, but as he chose me 
again next night, he does not seem to have 
thought it a serious matter. 

Then, too, once home we do not mount 
guard all the rest of the night, and are allowed 
to sleep in the morning; also there are small 
but pleasing discussions of the affair, and above 
all the hope of some night suddenly leaping out 
of the darkness hand to hand with the Ger- 
mans. 

In one of these night expeditions Farnsworth 
and his companions succeeded in sticking some 
French newspapers announcing Italy's declara- 
tion of war on the barbed wire in front of the 
German trenches. Pleased with their enter- 
prise, their captain gave seven of them twenty 
francs for a fete. "What an unforgettable 
supper!" cries the young Legionnaire: 

There was the sergeant, Zampanedes, a 
Greek of classic type, who won his spurs at 
Zanina and his stripes in the Bulgarian cam- 
paign. Since, he has been a medical student 
in Paris; that to please his family, for his heart 
runs in different channels, and he studies music 
and draws in his spare time. . . . We first fell 
into sympathy over the Acropolis, and cemented 
a true friendship over Turkish war songs and 



HENRY FARNSWORTH, LOVER OF BOOKS 33 

Byzantine chants, which he sings with a mourn- 
ful romanticism that I never heard before. 

Then there was Nicolet, the Company Clar- 
ion, serving his twelfth year in the Legion, 
an incredible little Swiss, tougher than the 
drums of the fore and aft and wise as Nestor in 
the futile ruses of the regiment. 

The Corporal, Mortens, a legionary wounded 
during the winter and cited for bravery in the 
order of the army. He was a commercial trav- 
eller in his native grand duchy of Luxemburg, 
but decided some five years ago to leave his 
debts and troubles behind him and become a 
Petit Zephyr de la Legion Etrangere. 

Sudic, a butcher from the same grand duchy, 
a man of iron physically and morally, but men- 
tally unimportant. 

Covalieros, a Greek of Smyrna, who might 
have spread his silks and laces at the feet of a 
feudal princess and charmed her with his shin- 
ing eyes and wild gestures into buying beyond 
her means. He also has been cited for reckless 
gallantry. 

i Sukuna and myself brought up the list. We 
were all in good spirits and flattered, and I, 
being in funds, put in f. 10 and Sukuna the 
same. Some of us drank as deep as Socrates, 
and we ate a mammoth salad under the stars. 
Nicolet and Mortens talked of the battalion in 
the Sahara, and Zampanedes sang his Eastern 
songs, and even Sukuna was moved to Tongan 
chants. Like iEneas on Polyphemus's isle, I 
feel that some years hence, well out of tune 



34 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

with all my surroundings, I shall be longing for 
the long warm summer days in northern France, 
when we slept like birds under the stars, among 
congenial friends, when no man ever thought of 
the morrow, and you changed horizons with 
each new conversation. 

The letter from which the foregoing is a selec- 
tion was written by Farnsworth to his mother 
on June 4, 1915. A month later the news from 
home that a friend of his was going to a train- 
ing-camp in the United States where he ex- 
pected to march five or six miles a day prompted 
him to give this vivid picture of an episode in 
the life of the Legionnaires: 

The other day we were waked at 2 a.m. and 
at 3 sent off in a pouring rain for some in- 
definite place across the mountains for a divi- 
sional review. We went off slowly through the 
wet darkness, but about dawn the sun came 
out and, as is usual with the Legion, everybody 
cheered up, and at 7 a.m. we arrived at the 
parade ground after fifteen kilometres in very 
good spirits. Two regiments of Zouaves from 
Africa were already drawn up. We formed up 
beside them, and then came the two tirailleurs 
regiments, their colors with them, then the 
second Etrangere, two thousand strong, and 
finally a squadron of Chasseurs d'Afrique. 



HENRY FARNSWORTH, LOVER OF BOOKS 35 

We all stacked arms and lay about on the 
grass till 8.30. Suddenly the Zouave bugles 
crashed out sounding the "Garde a vous" and 
in two minutes the division was lined up, every 
man stiff as a board — and all the time the 
bugles ringing angrily from up the line, and the 
short staccato trumpets of the chasseurs an- 
swering from the other extremity. 

The ringing stopped suddenly and the 
voices of the colonels crying " Baionnettes aux 
canons" sounded thin and long drawn out and 
were drowned by the flashing rattle of the 
bayonets going on — a moment of perfect silence, 
and then the slow, courtly-sounding of the 
" General ! General ! qui passe ! " broken by the 
occasional crash as regiment after regiment pre- 
sented arms. Slowly the General rode down 
the lines, the two Brigadiers and a Division 
General in his suite. 

Then came the defile. The Zouaves led off, 
their bugles playing "As tu vu la casquette, la 
casquette." Then the tirailleurs, playing some 
march of their own, slow and fine, the bugles 
answering the scream of the Arab reed flutes as 
though Loeffler had led them. Then the Le- 
gion, the second Etr anger e swinging in beside 
us at the double, and all the bugles crashed 
out with the Legion marching song, " Tiens voila 
du boudin pour les Beiges" etc. On and on 
went the bugles playing that light, slangy tune, 
some of the verses of which would make Rabe- 
lais shudder, and the minor variations of which 
bring up pictures of the Legion marching in 



36 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

thin ranks in foreign, blazing lands, and the 
drums of which, tapping slowly, sound like the 
feet of the regiment scrunching through desert 
sand. It was all very glorious to see and hear, 
and to wind up the chasseurs went by at the 
gallop — going off to their quarters. 

To wind up the day the Colonel took us 
home straight over the mountain — fourteen 
kilometres over mountain-goat tracks.* When 
we got in at 3.30 p. M., having had nothing to 
eat but a bit of bread, three sardines and a 
finger of cheese, few of the men were really 
exhausted. It was then I got your letter about 
the training camp. 

In August Farnsworth's regiment was in Al- 
sace. In September, however, it was on the 
march and took part in the bloody battle in 
Champagne toward the end of the month. His 
last letter was dated September 16, 1915. He 
was killed in the charge that his battalion made 
on the 28 th, before the Fort in de Navarin. The 
Farnsworth Room in the Widener Memorial 
Library at Harvard, a large room for the lei- 
surely reading of such standard books as Henry 
Farnsworth loved, was handsomely supplied with 
books, pictures and furniture by Mr. and Mrs. 
William Farnsworth, in memory of their son. 

* Making about eighteen miles going and returning. 



V 
A DESCENDANT OF CITIZEN GENET 

ONE of the most graphic narratives of the 
part which the First Regiment of the 
Foreign Legion played in the battle before 
Navarin, in which Farnsworth lost his life, is 
to be found in the "War Letters of Edmond 
Genet." Young Genet — he was only nineteen 
when he took part in this desperate engagement 
— was a great-great-grandson of Citizen Genet, 
whom the Revolutionary government of France 
sent to this country as its representative in 
1792, and whose indiscretions led to the request 
that he be recalled. He did not return to 
France, but made his home in Albany, and later 
married the daughter of Governor Clinton. 

Genet, whose home was in Ossining, New 
York, sailed for France at the end of January, 
1915. He had already been in the service of 
the United States Navy, and was on the battle- 
ship Georgia in Vera Cruz harbor in the previous 
spring. He was, as he wrote his chum on the 

37 



38 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

eve of sailing, "born to be a wanderer." Yet 
he was a youth of great independence and of 
resolute will, so that when he came to a full 
realization of the nature of the conflict and of 
the peril in which his beloved France was placed, 
his decision was prompt and was followed by 
immediate action. His high sense of duty and 
the call of the blood left him no alternative but 
to take his chances in the great war, as he 
phrased it, with the French. He had no illu- 
sions as to the probable outcome of his venture, 
but his religion — he was a devout Churchman 
— enabled him to face the worst that might 
happen to him with composure of mind and 
with a resolute heart. "I expect to have to 
give up my life on the battle-field," he wrote 
to a friend. "I care nothing about that. 
Death to me is but the beginning of another life 
— better and sweeter. I do not fear it." 

Early in February, 1915, Genet carried out 
the definite plan which he had formed before he 
left America of enlisting in the Foreign Legion. 
After nearly two months in various training- 
camps his regiment was put into the trenches 
in northern France, where, with alternate peri- 




c « 



s § 



a*: 



E 4^ 



A DESCENDANT OF CITIZEN GENET 39 

ods of rest and mild trench warfare, he passed 
many weeks. Finally, on September 22, in a 
short letter to his mother, he wrote that a "big 
fight" was coming. 

The letter in which Genet described his part 
in the battle which began on September 25 mis- 
carried, and consequently he sent a second, at a 
much later date, giving the details. From this 
letter the following selections are made: 

Leaving the camp of concentration that same 
night we marched to a town called Suippes 
and thence to a woods about three kilometres 
beyond and nearer the front. The country all 
around there is made up of many large plains, 
with here and there small wooded parts which 
were admirable hiding-places for troops. There 
we camped until the morning of the 25th, about 
a two weeks' period in which we were served 
the necessities for the coming fight — new clothes 
for old if required, masks for protection from 
gas, the metal helmets and many other things 
including the extra ammunition; 120 rounds is 
ordinarily carried per man and 250 for actual 
fighting. The latter is no light load. The last 
few nights of those two weeks we dug "lead- 
ers" to the trenches for the passage of extra 
troops. . . . 

The night before the 25th our colonel read 
to us in the dusk the order from Gen'l Joffre 



40 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

for the attack. The Division Marocaine was 
to be in the first reserve. The Colonial Divi- 
sion made the attack. Long before dawn on 
the 25th we marched to our position just to the 
rear of the first French line, to the west of the 
little village (then a mass of shattered ruins) of 
Sompey, amid a drenching misty rain. We had 
light loads in our sacks and plenty of cold ra- 
tions in our musettes (food-bags). The bom- 
bardment of the German trenches before the 
charge was terrific. The German line looked 
like a wall of fire and hellish flames from the 
bursting shells. The batteries of both sides 
made the world sound like Hades let loose. 
From the sharp crack of the famous French 
75 's to the deep roar of the aerial torpedoes it 
was an incessant Bedlam. About nine o'clock 
a French aeroplane flew right over our first 
line, circled around and back. It was the sig- 
nal for the French batteries to cease shelling 
the German first fine and for the Colonials to 
charge. They did, and nobly too. Taking the 
German first line, with a vast number of pris- 
oners, they forced the Germans back to their 
reserve lines. 

Then it was that we began our advance in 
their rear as reserves. Passing through the 
leaders toward the old French fine we passed 
scores of captured wounded Germans. Some 
of them, mere boys of 16 to 20, were in a ghastly 
condition. Bleeding, clothing torn to shreds, 
wounded by ball, shell and bayonet, they were 
pitiable sights. I saw many who sobbed with 



A DESCENDANT OF CITIZEN GENET 41 

their arms around a comrade's neck. We 
passed French dying and wounded being hur- 
riedly cared for by the hospital attendants. 
Blood was everywhere and it was simply sick- 
ening. The smell of powder filled the air and 
to me it is one of the most disagreeable odors 
we encountered with the exception of what 
came later — that of decayed bodies of horses 
and mules and even men, left unburied for 
whole weeks. That is too horrible for more 
than mention. 

We followed up the Colonials and passed 
part of the late morning in the captured Ger- 
man trenches. They were battered beyond 
description and filled with dead — mostly Ger- 
mans. German equipments lay thrown every- 
where, discarded in the flight. Many German 
wounded could be seen making their way pain- 
fully to the rear. I remember one poor fellow 
who must have been totally blinded for he 
walked directly into the barbed wire and had 
a most trying and painful time to get out. . . . 

About two o'clock we began to advance un- 
der fire behind the Colonials and then it was 
that I had about the closest shave from death 
in all that month. Our section had to advance 
over a ridge and we must have been seen by a 
battery which was sending shells of 320 mm. 
calibre into the advancing Colonials. Some- 
how we felt that huge shell coming; how, I 
don't know, but we all just threw ourselves flat 
into the mud. If I had been one little hun- 
dredth of a second late I wouldn't be telling 



42 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

the tale now. I felt that monster hurl directly 
over my head; the intake of air raised me at 
least an inch out of the mire which I was grip- 
ping with every finger and with all my might. 
The shell burst not more than three yards be- 
hind me and killed four of the section and 
wounded several others. My heart had one 
of the quickest jumps of its life. . . . 

We continued on our advance until darkness 
set in and lay all that night in a drenching 
rain in watery mud. Sleap was practically 
impossible. Shells were dropping around us 
every few minutes and anyway the horrors of 
the day just closed were too awful to allow 
pleasant dreams or even sleep to follow. All 
night the cries of the dying could be heard. I 
felt as though I were in some weird nightmare. 
I wish it had been, for then I could have awak- 
ened and found it to be only a dream. As it 
was it was a grim reality. 

Just after we arrived at that place, when 
darkness had set in, was when Dave Wheeler* 
showed his coolness. There was a false cry for 
us to charge and the Third Company, in which 
he was, started forward with bayonets on. 
The Commandant of the Battalion, seeing the 
mistake, jumped in front of the advancing and 
excited men and tried to check them. One of 
the sergeants of the Third helped him and Dave, 
cooler than the rest, did the same. The check 
succeeded and Dave told me afterward that 

* Dr. David E. Wheeler, of Buffalo, N. Y., a member of the Legion 
and a warm friend of Genet's. 



A DESCENDANT OF CITIZEN GENET 43 

the Commandant asked who he was. The 
Commandant found a soldier's death directly 
in front of Dave on the 28th in our attack. 
Early the next morning I tried to find Dave 
and couldn't and so was very afraid that he 
had been killed in the previous day's advance. 

We changed our position early that morning 
to a small woods behind the new French line 
which the Colonials were holding, and were 
under a terrific bombardment all the day, being 
in direct line between the dual fire of a French 
battery of 75's and one of the German 77's. 
The German shells landed nearer to us than 
they did to the French battery. That night 
our first lieutenant, a fine young man, was in- 
stantly killed by a bursting shell. We buried 
him where he fell like any other soldier. 

Being out of rations, several of us had to go 
nearly six kilometres that night for new rations 
for the company. You can imagine how tired 
we were when we got back and it was raining 
again which didn't help sleeping a bit. 

The following day we moved farther back to 
another woods, but here we got into a worse 
bombardment. We lost men there every day. 
To protect ourselves as much as possible from 
the bursting shells we dug individual trenches 
into the ground just large enough to lie in, but 
many a poor fellow merely dug his own grave 
for they are no protection should a shell fall 
directly into one on top of the occupant. It 
was hell and nothing less. That day I found 
Dave and felt much better for it. I guess he 



44 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

did too for that matter. That was the 27th — 
only the third day of the horrors. 

The 28th (it will live in my memory forever) 
brought no excitement until the middle of the 
afternoon. Then we were ordered to prepare 
to depart for the attack. The Colonel had 
chafed over continually being in reserve and 
had personally asked the General in command 
for permission to put the Legion to the front 
attack. His request was granted. The first 
and second companies of the First Battalion 
and the third and fourth of the Second Battalion 
were to take the advance. The other two 
companies of each battalion held the reserve. 
Ahead of us the Arab Tirailleurs made two 
strong charges and both times had to fall back. 
They were ordered to make a third and, refusing 
to face again the murderous fire of the German 
machine-guns, turned in flight. 

Meanwhile we had started our advance in 
solid columns of fours, each section a unit. It 
was wonderful — that slow advance. Not a 
waver, not a break, through the storm of shell 
the Legion marched forward. Officers in ad- 
vance with the Commandant at their head; it 
inspired us all to courage and calmness. We 
met the fleeing Tirailleurs and our officers tried 
to turn them back. I saw our Commandant, 
wrath written all over his face, deliberately 
kick one Arab to make him halt in his flight. 
Shells were bursting everywhere. One lost his 
personal feelings. He simply became a unit — 
a machine. 



A DESCENDANT OF CITIZEN GENET 45 

Crossing a clearing we came at last to a 
woods just in front of the German line. There 
we met the decimating fire of the machine-guns, 
bayonets were fixed, and the order given to 
advance on the run. A faint cheer rose above 
the ping-ping of the bullets. Leaping a trench 
containing the terrified Tirailleurs, we charged. 
The forward French line which the Colonial 
troops were holding was still before us. There 
was a slight pause when we got there. The sec- 
tions formed into a skirmish-line and, being in 
the fourth section of our company, the Fourth, 
I got away over on the left flank. The Third 
Company was on our right. Everywhere men 
were falling. The fire was terrific. As I ran for 
the left with the secti >n I could hear the bullets 
cutting the leaves aud twigs all around me — 
ping, ping, they hissed as they struck the trees. 
They came from the front and the left, hissing 
death in our ranks 'til there were few of us left. 

While the woods ended at the French line in 
front, they extended far beyond on our flank. 
We leaped the first line where the Colonials 
were. Their duty was to stay there and hold 
that line. We charged on, but somehow about 
fifty metres ahead of the line I found myself' 
alone with one other young fellow from my 
section. The others who had leaped the French 
line with us were nowhere to be seen. Seeing 
this, we dropped flat behind a bush, thinking 
the rest would rush up behind us and continue 
the charge. The Germans had begun to shell 
the wood just ahead of us. The din was ter- 



46 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

rific. Dead Tirailleurs were lying everywhere, 
killed in those two first charges, ghastly and 
bloody. There were none of the Legion around 
us to charge. I turned to my companion and 
said, "They're all dead here (motioning to the 
corpses); the section must be behind us; shall 
we beat it back?" He nodded, stood up and 
started back on the run. I followed and 
reached the Colonial line without a scratch. I 
never saw the young Italian again but heard a 
long time after that he had been wounded and 
was carried back that night. 

Behind the Colonial line I found the two 
sergeants of my section with half a dozen men. 
They had retreated before my comrade and I 
had seen them, and wtve waiting there for 
further events. Darkness was falling. I had 
thrown away my sack in the commencement 
of the charge and in it were my rations — some 
bread and a tin of beef — and my tent. I had 
a mouthful of water in my canteen but nothing 
to eat. We lay there until after seven and then 
the Adjutant, the only officer left of our com- 
pany, found us and the remnants of the Third 
and our company were gathered together to 
go back to where we were before the attack. 
A half kilometre back of the line the Major (the 
Battalion doctor) had five badly wounded men 
of the two companies and asked the Adjutant 
to let us carry them back to the field-hospital 
in the rear. Tents were secured, and with four 
of us to each tent we carried them nearly four 
kilometres over rough muddy ground to the 



A DESCENDANT OF CITIZEN GENET 47 

field-hospital. You can imagine the agonies of 
those five wounded men being carried along un- 
der such conditions. They stood it far better 
than I thought they would. 

When the Adjutant counted us off in fours 
to carry them he counted just thirty-one, in- 
cluding himself, gathered there from the two 
companies of 250 each ! I found my little S. 
American comrade safe among them and heard 
from a hospital attendant that he had seen 
Dave crawling off to the rear after the fight 
with a bullet wound in his leg. He said he had 
more pluck than any of them. Thus it was 
that I wrote to Mrs. Wheeler the next day and 
told her of Dave's condition and not to worry. 
As it was, she heard from him before she got 
my note, but just the same I was glad I had 
written. Brave Dave went down beside his 
captain, the last of his company in that section, 
and he saw his captain and the Commandant 
both make very brave ends. 

The thirty-one of us reached our old camp 
about ten and dropped gladly into our little 
trenches for sleep. It was raining, there was an 
inch of water in my trench and I had no tent 
to put over me. I was soaked through, cov- 
ered with mud, hungry, thirsty, and thoroughly 
exhausted but sleep was impossible. I dozed 
and shivered for the rest of the night, thinking 
of the afternoon's events and wondering fear- 
fully whether Dave was alive and safely on his 
way to succor. I prayed it was so and dawn 
brought sunshine and some warmth. 



48 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

We who were left looked around that morn- 
ing to see who was there. Old faces were gone. 
Out of my squad of twelve there were only two 
of us left. We all had our little accounts to 
tell. Our Adjutant and the few sergeants left, 
at the order from the Colonel, got the Third 
and Fourth Companies together into one. There 
were, with those who turned up that day, about 
120 all told — all that was left from nearly 500 ! 
We got soup and meat, a swallow of whiskey 
and wine, and tried to make ourselves com- 
fortable. It was hard work. . . . 

The next day I found some of the Ameri- 
cans in the other Battalion and learned of 
Farnsworth's death in the attack. No other 
American was lost in the First Regiment. 

October 2nd we were drawn back to the rear 
to the camp where we were the first day at 
Champagne. The French were strengthening 
their position all over. New positions were 
being established for the batteries. All the 
counter-attacks of the German forces had failed. 
The French victory was complete. 

Soon after this terrific battle Genet's regi- 
ment of the Foreign Legion went into retire- 
ment near Paris, and he saw no more active 
service in its ranks. During the winter he was 
in this rest-camp, with occasional visits to 
Paris, where he saw much of his friends the 
Wheelers, Dr. Wheeler having recovered from 



A DESCENDANT OF CITIZEN GENET 49 

the wound in his leg.* In the spring of 1916 
Genet was able to secure a transfer from the 
Foreign Legion to the French aviation corps, 
a change for which he had been working since 
the previous autumn. His experiences as an 
aviator will be considered later. 

*After serving as captain in the Canadian Army, Dr. Wheeler, when 
the United States entered the war, was transferred to the American 
forces with the rank of major. He served as regimental surgeon in 
Lorraine, at Cantigny, and at Chateau-Thierry, and was killed in 
August, 1918, while attending the wounded under fire. 



VI 
ALAN SEEGER, POET OF THE LEGION 

THE fullest and the most serious and prob- 
ably, as a consequence, the most valuable 
record thus far published of life in the For- 
eign Legion, is to be found in the " Letters 
and Diary of Alan Seeger." Seeger was some- 
what older than the other American volunteers 
who were in the Legion and more mature in 
mind, having seen much of the world, having 
meditated deeply and having expressed himself 
in verse of enduring value. Then, too, it was 
vouchsafed to him, being in reserve yet by no 
means out of danger, to live through the battle 
of Champagne, so vividly described by young 
Genet, and to continue in the Legion until 
July, 1916, nearly two years, when he fell at 
Belloy-en-Santerre. His diary and letters, there- 
fore, cover a longer period than those of any 
other American in the Foreign Legion. 

Born in New York, of old New England 

50 



ALAN SEEGER, POET OF THE LEGION 51 

stock, in 1888, Seeger passed his boyhood on 
Staten Island. When he was twelve the family 
moved to the city of Mexico, where the youth 
lived two years, a period which left a deep im- 
pression upon his temperament and his tastes. 
He entered Harvard in 1906 from the Hackley 
School at Tarrytown, New York, having in the 
interval spent a year with a tutor in California. 
The first half of his college course was given to 
his studies and to miscellaneous reading, the 
latter half rather more to his friends. The 
members of his family were exceptionally gifted 
as writers and musicians, and his tastes were 
along similar lines. Even when a boy in the 
city of Mexico he and the other members of 
the family had issued a home magazine, and in 
college he was one of the editors of the Harvard 
Monthly. 

The two years following Seeger' s graduation 
in 1910 formed a period of hesitation and un- 
certainty as to his course in life. Finally he 
decided that what he sought might be found in 
Paris — beauty, romance, picturesqueness, the 
joy of life. Thus it happened that when the 
war began he was living among the students of 



52 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

the Latin Quarter, absorbing experiences and 
recording his thoughts and feelings in verse. 
Before the war was three weeks old he, with a 
number of his fellow countrymen, enlisted in 
the Foreign Legion of France. He has ex- 
plained, with simplicity and with obvious sin- 
cerity, the motive which led them to take this 
step. In a letter written from the Aisne trenches 
in May, 1915, to the New Republic, he said: 

I have talked with so many of the young 
volunteers here. Their case is little known, 
even by the French, yet altogether interesting 
and appealing. They are foreigners on whom 
the outbreak of war laid no formal compulsion. 
But they had stood on the butte in springtime 
perhaps, as Julian and Louise stood, and looked 
out over the myriad twinkling lights of the 
beautiful city. Paris — mystic, maternal, per- 
sonified, to whom they owed the happiest mo- 
ments of their lives — Paris was in peril. Were 
they not under a moral obligation, no less bind- 
ing than [that by which] their comrades were 
bound legally, to put their breasts between her 
and destruction? Without renouncing their 
nationality, they had yet chosen to make their 
homes here beyond any other city in the world. 
Did not the benefits and blessings they had re- 
ceived point them a duty that heart and con- 
science could not deny? 



ALAN SEEGER, POET OF THE LEGION 53 
A month later he wrote to his mother; 

You must not be anxious about my not 
coming back. The chances are about ten to 
one that I will. But if I should not, you must 
be proud, like a Spartan mother, and feel that 
it is your contribution to the triumph of the 
cause whose righteousness you feel so keenly. 
Everybody should take part in this struggle 
which is to have so decisive an effect, not only 
on the nations engaged but on all humanity. 
There should be no neutrals, but everyone 
should bear some part of the burden. If so 
large a part should fall to your share, you would 
be in so far superior to other women and should 
be correspondingly proud. There would be 
nothing to regret, for I could not have done 
otherwise than what I did, and I think I could 
not have done better. Death is nothing terrible 
after all. It may mean something even more 
wonderful than life. It cannot possibly mean 
anything worse to the good soldier. 

It was in this spirit of high chivalry and with 
a deep conviction of the justice of the cause for 
which he was ready to lay down his life that 
Seeger entered the Foreign Legion. Many 
weeks of hard drilling at Toulouse followed. 
Then his regiment, the Second Etranger, about 
4,000 men, was transferred to the Camp de 



54 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

Mailly, and by the middle of October he had 
hopes of soon being at the front. "I go into 
action," he wrote, "with the lightest of light 
hearts. The hard work and moments of fright- 
ful fatigue have not broken but hardened me, 
and I am in excellent health and spirits. . . . 
I am happy and full of excitement over the 
wonderful days that are ahead." 

Seeger's hopes for early action were not ful- 
filled. His regiment found itself in the trenches 
in the centre of the battle line in northern 
France in the early winter, without any pros- 
pect of open warfare, and his disappointment 
was keen. In a letter to the New York Sun, 
written early in December, he described life in 
the trenches as follows: 

This style of warfare is extremely modern 
and for the artillerymen is doubtless very inter- 
esting, but for the poor common soldier it is 
anything but romantic. His role is simply to 
dig himself a hole in the ground and to keep 
hidden in it as tightly as possible. Continually 
under the fire of the opposing batteries, he is 
yet never allowed to get a glimpse of the enemy. 
Exposed to all the dangers of war, but with 
none of its enthusiasms or splendid elan, he is 
condemned to sit like an animal in its burrow 



ALAN SEEGER, POET OF THE LEGION 55 

and hear the shells whistle over his head and 
take their little daily toll from his comrades. 

The winter morning dawns with gray skies 
and the hoar frost on the fields. His feet are 
numb, his canteen frozen, but he is not allowed 
to make a fire. The winter night falls, with its 
prospect of sentry duty, and the continual ap- 
prehension of the hurried call to arms; he is not 
even permitted to light a candle, but must fold 
himself in his blanket and lie down cramped in 
the dirty straw to sleep as best he may. How 
different from the popular notion of the evening 
campfire, the songs and good cheer. 

Early in January, 1915, Seeger's regiment 
was moved to a ruined village, where he found 
the life much less trying than in the trenches. 
The village, however, was in the most danger- 
ous part of the sector, close to the German 
lines, from which patrols came down almost 
every night to harass the French outposts. In 
a letter to his father, dated January 11, Seeger 
narrated an incident, illustrating the nature of 
this patrol warfare: 

Four days almost without sleep, constant 
assignment to petit poste, sometimes 12 out of 
24 hours on guard in the most dangerous posi- 
tions. It was in one of these that I came for 
the first time in immediate contact with the 



56 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

enemy in a most unfortunate affair. I was 
standing guard under the wall of a chateau 
park with a comrade when a patrol sneaked up 
on the other side and threw a hand grenade 
over, which sputtered a moment at our feet 
and went out without exploding. Without cry- 
ing to arms, I left the other sentry on the spot 
and walked down to the petit poste, about 100 
metres away and called out the corporal of the 
guard. We walked back to the spot together 
and had hardly arrived when another bomb 
came over, which exploded among us with a 
tremendous detonation. In the confusion that 
followed the attacking party burst in the door 
that covered a breach in the wall at this spot 
and poured a volley into our midst, killing our 
corporal instantly and getting away before we 
had time to fire a shot. 

In a letter to the New York Sun Seeger de- 
scribed this incident with more particularity, 
adding this detail: 

That night there was not much difference 
at petit poste between the two hours on guard 
and the two hours off. Every one was on the 
alert, keyed up with apprehension. But noth- 
ing happened, as indeed there was no reason 
to suppose that anything would. Only about 
midnight, from far up on the hillside, a diaboli- 
cal cry came down, more like an animal's than 
a man's, a blood-curdling yell of mockery and 
exultation. 



ALAN SEEGER, POET OF THE LEGION 57 

In that cry all the evolution of centuries 
was levelled. I seemed to hear the yell of the 
warrior of the stone age over his fallen enemy. 
It was one of those antidotes to civilization of 
which this war can offer so many to the searcher 
after extraordinary sensations. 

Spring passed and summer came in compara- 
tive inactivity, though the regiment was moved 
from place to place. Early in July the Ameri- 
cans received permission to spend the Fourth 
in Paris, and Seeger notes that there were 
thirty-two to avail themselves of this privilege. 
The glimpses one gets of his American comrades 
are few and meagre; his French companions are 
apparently of more interest to him. His diary 
under date of July 27, however, notes that the 
regiment is billeted in a village in Alsace at the 
foot of the Vosges and that he and his college- 
mate, King, often spent the evening together at 
a little inn called Le Cheval Blanc. He passed 
some time, also, reading Treitschke's "Lectures 
on Politics," which Victor Chapman had lent 
him. On July 31 he made this entry: "Walked 
up to Plancher-les-Mines with Victor Chapman; 
there met Farnsworth who is in the l er Etran- 
ger, and we all had dinner together." 



58 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

In August Seeger wrote in this vein to his 
mother: 

Given my nature, I could not have done 
otherwise than I have done. Anything con- 
ceivable that I might have done had I not en- 
listed would have been less than what I am 
doing now, and anything that I may do after 
the war is over, if I survive, will be less too. I 
have always had the passion to play the biggest 
part within my reach and it is really in a sense 
a supreme success to be allowed to play this. 
If I do not come out, I will share the good for- 
tune of those who disappear at the pinnacle of 
their careers. Come to love France and under- 
stand the almost unexampled nobility of the 
effort this admirable people is making, for that 
will be the surest way of your finding comfort for 
anything that I am ready to suffer in their cause. 

The great offensive that was to be launched 
by the French at the end of September found 
Seeger in a state of high expectation. His regi- 
ment was to support the Colonials. In Octo- 
ber he wrote to his mother as follows of his 
share in the battle: 

The part we played in the battle is briefly 
as follows. We broke camp about 11 o'clock 
the night of the 24th, and marched up through 
ruined Souain to our place in one of the numer- 



ALAN SEEGER, POET OF THE LEGION 59 

ous boyaux where the troupes d'attaque were 
massed. The cannonade was pretty violent all 
that night, as it had been for several days pre- 
vious, but toward dawn it reached an intensity 
unimaginable to anyone who has not seen a 
modern battle. A little before 9.15 the fire 
lessened suddenly and the crackle of the fusil- 
lade between the reports of the cannon told us 
that the first wave of assault had left and the 
attack begun. At the same time we received 
the order to advance. The German artillery 
had now begun to open upon us in earnest. 
Amid the most infernal roar of every kind of 
fire-arms and through an atmosphere heavy 
with dust and smoke we marched up through 
the boyaux to the tranchees de depart. At shal- 
low places and over breaches that shells had 
made in the bank we caught momentary glimpses 
of the blue lines sweeping up the hillside or sil- 
houetted on the crest where they poured into 
the German trenches. When the last wave of 
the Colonial brigade had left, we followed. 
Baionnette au canon, in lines of tirailleurs, we 
crossed the open space between the lines, over 
the barbed wire, where not so many of our men 
were lying as I had feared (thanks to the effi- 
cacy of the bombardment) and over the Ger- 
man trench, knocked to pieces and filled with 
their dead. In some places they still resisted 
in isolated groups. Opposite us, all was over, 
and the herds of prisoners were being already 
led down as we went up. We cheered, more in 
triumph than in hate, but the poor devils, ter- 



60 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

ror-stricken, held up their hands, begged for 
their lives, cried "Kainerad," "Bon Francais," 
even "Vive la France." We advanced and lay 
down in columns by two behind the second 
crest. Meanwhile, bridges had been thrown 
across trenches and boyaux, and the artillery, 
leaving the emplacements where they had been 
anchored a whole year, came across and took 
position in the open, a magnificent spectacle. 
Squadrons of cavalry came up. Suddenly the 
long, unpicturesque guerre de tranchees was at 
an end and the field really presented the aspect 
of the familiar battle pictures — the battalions 
in manoeuvre, the officers, superbly indifferent 
to danger, galloping about on their chargers. 
But now the German guns, moved back, began 
to get our range and the shells to burst over 
and around batteries and troops, many with 
admirable precision. Here my best comrade 
was struck down by shrapnel at my side — pain- 
fully but not mortally wounded. 

I often envied him after that. For now our 
advanced troops were in contact with the Ger- 
man second-line defenses, and these proved to 
be of a character so formidable that all further 
advance without a preliminary artillery prepa- 
ration was out of the question. And our role, 
that of troops in reserve, was to lie passive in 
an open field under a shell fire that every hour 
became more terrific, while aeroplanes and cap- 
tive balloons, to which we were entirely ex- 
posed, regulated the fire. 

That night we spent in the rain. With port- 



ALAN SEEGER, POET OF THE LEGION 61 

able picks and shovels each man dug himself 
in as well as possible. The next day our con- 
centrated artillery again began the bombard- 
ment, and again the fusillade announced the en- 
trance of the infantry into action. But this 
time only the wounded appeared coming back, 
no prisoners. 

Seeger's regiment was held in reserve during 
September 28, the enemy's wire entanglements 
before a piece of woods to be attacked not hav- 
ing been sufficiently destroyed, and the com- 
manding officer, who had replaced the wounded 
colonel of the regiment, refusing to risk his 
men. In his review of the battle Seeger ad- 
mitted that, although the French had forced 
back the German line along a wide front, had 
advanced several kilometres and had captured 
many prisoners and cannon, the larger aim of 
driving the enemy across the Aisne, broken and 
defeated, had failed. 

His admiration for the French was, however, 
undiminished. Under date of October 25 he 
wrote to his mother: 

This affair only deepened my admiration 
for, my loyalty to, the French. If we did not 
entirely succeed, it was not the fault of the 



m IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

French soldier. He is a better man, man for 
man, than the German. Any one who had 
seen the charge of the Marsouins at Souain 
would acknowledge it. Never was anything 
more magnificent. I remember a captain, badly 
wounded in the leg, as he passed us, borne back 
on a litter by four German prisoners. He asked 
us what regiment we were, and when we told 
him, he cried, "Vive la Legion," and kept re- 
peating "Nous les avons eus. Nous les avons 
eus." He was suffering, but, oblivious of his 
wound, was still fired with the enthusiasm of 
the assault and all radiant with victory. 

What a contrast with the German wounded, 
on whose faces was nothing but terror and de- 
spair. What is the stimulus in their slogans of 
"Gott mit uns" and "fiir Konig und Vaterland" 
beside that of men really fighting in defense of 
their country? Whatever be the force in in- 
ternational conflicts of having justice and all 
the principles of personal morality on one's 
side, it at least gives the French soldier a 
strength that's like the strength of ten against 
an adversary whose weapon is only brute vio- 
lence. It is inconceivable that a Frenchman, 
forced to yield, could behave as I saw German 
prisoners behave, trembling, on their knees, for 
all the world like criminals at length overpow- 
ered and brought to justice. Such men have 
to be driven to the assault, or intoxicated. But 
the Frenchman who goes up is possessed with a 
passion beside which any of the other forms of 
experience that are reckoned to make life worth 



ALAN SEEGER, POET OF THE LEGION 63 

while seem pale in comparison. The modern 
prototvpe of those whom history has handed 
down to the admiration of all who love liberty 
and heroism in its defense, it is a privilege to 
march at his side — so much so that nothing the 
world could give could make me wish myself 
anywhere else than where I am. 

Seeger passed the winter of 1915-16 with his 
regiment in reserve. An attack of bronchitis 
took him out of the service for three and a half 
months, but did not diminish his ardor. "I 
shall go back the first of May," he wrote, "with- 
out regrets. These visits to the rear confirm 
me in my conviction that the work up there on 
the front is so far the most interesting work 
that a man can be doing at this moment, that 
nothing else counts in comparison." He passed 
a happy month in Paris. "I lived," he wrote, 
"as though I were saying good-by to life," as 
indeed he was. 

After his return to the front-line trenches 
Seeger found time to write several sonnets 
which he sent to his "marraine," Mrs. Weeks. 
In two days, moreover, in the intervals of ex- 
hausting work with pick and shovel in boyau- 
digging, he composed the "Ode in Memory of 



64 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

the American Volunteers Fallen for France," 
without doubt the most noteworthy poem 
which any American had contributed up to 
that time to the permanent literature of the 
war. He hoped to read it on Decoration Day 
before the statue of Washington and Lafayette 
in Paris, but this rare privilege was denied 
him, owing to the failure of his permission for 
forty-eight hours' leave to arrive in time. His 
last letter was dated June 28, and, anticipating 
active fighting, it was characteristic of him to 
end it with these courageous words: 

I am glad to be going in first wave. If you 
are in this thing at all it is best to be in to the 
limit. And this is the supreme experience. 

Seeger was killed in the successful attack on 
Belloy-en-Santerre, which the Legion made 
late on the afternoon of July 4. He was in the 
first line of his company that swept across the 
plain before the village, and, with many of his 
comrades, was mowed down by a cross-fire of 
German machine-guns. 

"Mortally wounded," wrote a participant in 
the attack in La Liberie of Paris, "it was his 



ALAN SEEGER, POET OF THE LEGION 65 

fate to see his comrades pass him in their splen- 
did charge and to forego the supreme moment 
of victory to which he had looked forward 
through so many months of bitterest hardship 
and trial. Together with those other generous 
wounded of the Legion fallen, he cheered on 
the fresh files as they came up to the attack and 
listened anxiously for the cries of triumph which 
should tell of their success. 

"It was no moment for rescue. In that zone 
of deadly cross-fire there could be but one 
thought — to get beyond it alive, if possible. 
So it was not until the next day that his body 
was found and buried, with scores of his com- 
rades, on the battle-field of Belloy-en-Santerre." 

As William Archer well remarks in the intro- 
duction to the volume of Seeger's "Poems," 
"He wrote his own best epitaph in the 'Ode'": 

And on those furthest rims of hallowed ground 
Where the forlorn, the gallant charge expires, 
When the slain bugler has long ceased to sound, 
And on the tangled wires 
The last wild rally staggers, crumbles, stops, 
Withered beneath the shrapnel's iron showers: — 
Now heaven be thanked, we gave a few brave drops, 
Now heaven be thanked, a few brave drops were ours. 



VII 

VICTOR CHAPMAN AS A LEGIONNAIRE 

"T 7ICT0R CHAPMAN'S Letters from 
▼ France," dealing with his service for 
ten months in the Foreign Legion, after which 
he was transferred to the aviation corps, must 
be read in the light of the illuminating memoir 
which his father, John J. Chapman, prefaces 
to the volume. By far the most significant 
portion of this memoir is the vivid portrait of 
the boy's mother, half Italian by blood but 
wholly Italian in temperament and in the 
traits which she bequeathed to her son. 

Young Chapman was graduated at Harvard 
in 1913. Before entering college he had spent 
a year in France and Germany, and on being 
graduated he became a Beaux-Arts student of 
architecture in Paris. When the war broke out 
he and his father and stepmother — his own 
mother had died when he was six — fled from 
Paris to London. 

66 



VICTOR CHAPMAN AS A LEGIONNAIRE 67 

Even when he was a boy Chapman, accord- 
ing to his father, never really felt that he was 
alive, except when he was in danger. He did 
not care for books or for sports, but he was pas- 
sionately fond of color and scenery. "If you 
could place him," says his father, "in a position 
of danger and let him watch scenery, he was in 
heaven. I do not think he was ever completely 
happy in his life till the day he got his flying 
papers." From his mother he got his large 
frame and his corresponding physical energy, 
which he loved to expend lavishly in the service 
of his friends. He "could eat anything, sleep 
on anything, lift anything, endure anything," 
says his father. "He never had enough of 
roughing it till he joined the Foreign Legion." 

Chapman was in the Legion from the end of 
September, 1914, until August, 1915. During 
this period his battalion, though often under 
fire, was not actively engaged. He found the 
inactivity of trench life irksome, and felt that 
he was wasting his time. His chief interests 
were the odd characters in the Legion with 
whom he made friends, and the scenery. Here 
is his description of the Christmas truce of 



68 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

1914, when, in certain parts of the line, the Ger- 
mans and the Legionnaires fraternized: 

Xmas in the trenches was interesting but not 
too exciting. Beginning the eve before, '^con- 
versations" in the form of calls. "Bodies/' "ga 
va," etc. In response: "Bon camarade," "ciga- 
rettes," "nous boirons champagne a Paris/' etc. 
Christmas morning a Russian up the line who 
spoke good German wished them the greetings 
of the season, to which the Boches responded 
that instead of nice wishes they would be very 
grateful to the French if the latter buried their 
compatriot who had lain before their trenches 
for the last two months. The Russian walked 
out to see if it were so, returned to the line, got 
a French officer and a truce was established. 
The burying funeral performed, a German 
Colonel distributed cigars and cigarettes and 
another German officer took a picture of the 
group. We, of course, were one half-mile down 
the line so did not see the ceremony, though our 
Lieutenant attended. No shooting was inter- 
changed all day, and last night absolute still- 
ness, though we were warned to be on the alert. 
This morning, Nedim, a picturesque, childish 
Turk, began again standing on the trenches 
and yelling at the opposite side. Vesconsole- 
dose, a cautious Portuguese, warned him not 
to expose himself so, and since he spoke Ger- 
man made a few remarks showing his head. 
He turned to get down and — fell ! a bullet hav- 
ing entered the back of his skull: groans, a pud- 
dle of blood. 



VICTOR CHAPMAN AS A LEGIONNAIRE 69 

Two months later Chapman sent his father 
this pen -portrait of Nedim: 

There was Nedim, Nedim Bey, a Turk — a 
black, heavy-faced Turk, and a typical Asiatic. 
He always wore two passes-montag?ies, one pulled 
down round his chin so that his grizzled un- 
kempt beard and nose protruded through. I 
believe he had been sent by the Turkish Gov- 
ernment to study, and had worked in the French 
cannon factories. At any rate the Lieutenant 
had a high admiration for him which no one 
could understand. His French was wonderful ! 
The article did not exist, but he was fond of the 
preposition de; as, mon de pain. He got per- 
mission at both places to build a separate hole 
for himself. After working night and day till 
it was finished he would light a roaring fire and 
sleep in an atmosphere warm enough to boil 
an egg. At the other position he had a dug-out 
about five feet long by two high, with a grate 
fire at the end of it. And he slept with his 
head against the fireplace ! His love for fire 
resulted in his burning ends and patches of all 
of his clothes, and about his abri were always 
strewn pieces of burnt sacks. ... He made 
an indestructible creneau from which he pumped 
shot. Inevitably the Germans soon located it 
and the other day he was hit in the head and 
evacuated. 

Chapman's chief resource in the way of in- 
tellectual companionship was a Polish Jew 



70 IN THE FOREIGN LEGION 

named Kohn. Of him he wrote as follows, 
under date of January 30, 1915: 

My great joy, though vexation occasionally, 
is Kohn. Though of such a lovable and child- 
like innocence of character, he is a softy from 
having been always pampered. His learning 
is immense. I picked up a New York Times 
last night — article by G. B. Shaw. So I cas- 
ually asked Kohn, who was entirely between 
the sack curtains, what kind of Socialist was 
Shaw? "A Fabianist," and with that he gave 
me an account of the growth of Socialism in 
England, how it influenced the continents — the 
briefest kind of a sketch of the points of diver- 
gence between Socialism and Anarchism. Well, 
I was numbed by slumber soon and had to beg 
him to leave off till I was in a more receptive 
mood. And Political Economy is not his line, 
for he says mathematics is his specialty. With 
that he is of an artistic temperament, almost 
mystic, in his way of doing things. Heredia 
used to say that Kohn did the rude physical 
work as though he was performing a religious 
rite: in fact, with such devotion and zeal that 
he soon wore himself down and became more 
subject than any of us to the cliche we all suf- 
fered from. 

Three weeks later, in a letter to his uncle, 
Chapman gave the details of the death of his 
friend Kohn, "shot beside us in front of our 



VICTOR CHAPMAN AS A LEGIONNAIRE 71 

abri while taking observations with field-glasses 
of hills to the northeast." Chapman missed his 
companionship very much. 

After his regiment was transferred to Alsace 
Chapman met several Americans who were in 
other regiments of the Foreign Legion — xAlan 
Seeger, Henry Farnsworth, and David King. 
In the company of these men, all of whom, as it 
happened, had been at Harvard, and in a beau- 
tiful valley among the foot-hills of the Vosges, 
Chapman was "very happy." He was, how- 
ever, to attain to his highest point of happiness, 
as will be revealed later, as an aviator. 



PART II 
WITH FAMOUS BRITISH REGIMENTS 



VIII 
JOHN P. POE, OF THE FIRST BLACK WATCH 

ON the official records of Princeton he was 
known as John Prentiss Poe, Jr., of Bal- 
timore, of the class of 1895. To his college 
mates he was known as Johnny Poe. He was 
eminently a man of deeds, not words. When in 
his freshman year he was elected president of 
his class, chiefly for the reason, rival candidates 
alleged, that he was "the homeliest man in the 
whole bunch," this was his speech of accep- 
tance: * 

Fellows, I am proud of the honor you have 
bestowed upon me. My face can't be ruined 
much, so I'll go in all the battles with you head 
first. Nominations are now in order for vice- 
president. 

This was the martial spirit that animated 
Johnny Poe, not only during his college career, 
when, like his brothers, he won fame on the 
football-field, but throughout his whole life. 

75 



76 WITH FAMOUS BRITISH REGIMENTS 

The softness and ease of peace had no attrac- 
tions for him; his one ambition was to get into 
the thick of a good fight, "head first." 

The army offered the best outlet for his 
superabundant energies. So in the war with 
Spain, in 1898, we find him in Cuba with the 
Fifth Maryland Regiment. But he participated 
in no fighting. The taste, however, which he 
had got of army life made him hungry for 
more, and so, in the hope of seeing some real 
fighting, he joined the regulars, and in 1899 he 
was in the Philippines, a private in the 23d 
United States Infantry. But he was again dis- 
appointed; the campaign was tame. He did 
not give up, however. In 1903 he served with 
a detachment of Kentucky militia in the sup- 
pression of a mountain feud. 

Late in the same year, in November, when 
there was considerable excitement on the isth- 
mus because of the revolt of Panama from Co- 
lombia, Poe thought that "the real thing" 
might be within his grasp, if the United States 
Government sent troops to the scene. Accord- 
ingly he went to Washington and wrote a char- 
acteristic letter to the commandant of the Ma- 



JOHN P. POE, OF THE BLACK WATCH 77 

rine Corps, offering to enlist for active service. 
The letter was as follows: 

I understand that the Dixie is to take a 
battalion of marines to Colon from League 
Island next week. ... I wouldn't mind en- 
listing except that I might be put to guarding 
some colony of land crabs 200 or 300 miles from 
where the fighting was going on, as in the Phil- 
ippines, where the only thing our company did 
was to make the Sultan of Sulu sign a receipt 
for the 125 dollars Uncle Sam gave him. If I 
were to go there, to Panama, and not see any 
service, I would feel that if I were to go to 
Hades for the warmth, the fires would be at 
least banked, if not altogether extinguished, 
owing to furnaces being repaired. I was in- 
troduced to some cow-punchers in New Mexico 
by Mike Furness, '91, as "the hero of two wars, 
whose only wounds are scars from lying on his 
bunk too much." I must outlive that reputa- 
tion. 

Impressed by the unusual tone of this letter, 
General George F. Elliott took Poe himself over 
to John D. Long, then Secretary of the Navy, 
and laid the case before him. Secretary Long 
was so amused by the letter and so pleased by 
the writer's soldierly spirit that he ordered the 
necessary arrangements to be made for Poe to 



78 WITH FAMOUS BRITISH REGIMENTS 

join the marines. He sailed on the Dixie and 
was made a sergeant. He refused, however, to 
accept the position, preferring to remain in the 
ranks. His reason was that he did not care for 
authority and disliked responsibility, even the 
small share that would attach to a non-commis- 
sioned office. He wanted to enjoy the pleasure 
of fighting independently, as an individual, 
without the care of controlling other men. 
Again, however, he was thwarted in his desire 
to get into active service; and Poe regarded 
active service, according to Captain Frank E. 
Evans, editor of the Marine Corps Gazette, from 
which the foregoing facts are taken, as "the 
acme of adventure, the greatest game in the 
world." There was no fighting of any conse- 
quence on Panama, and he returned to the 
United States. 

Poe had to wait until 1914 for the great op- 
portunity of his life, which the war in Europe 
presented. At last he saw his chance to get his 
fill of real fighting in what promised to be the 
most stupendous war of all time. He went to 
Canada immediately and volunteered. Reach- 
ing England, he was transferred to the heavy 



JOHN P. POE, OF THE BLACK WATCH 79 

artillery. A little experience, however, in this 
branch of the service was enough for him. 
Long-range fighting was not to his taste, and he 
again succeeded in transferring to the First 
Black Watch, the Scottish regiment famous in 
Great Britain's military annals, with a record 
of more than one hundred and fifty years of 
service. 

Thus in the spring of 1915 Poe was endeavor- 
ing to make himself at home among the "Ladies 
from Hell," as the Germans later dubbed these 
kilted Scots, whom they found to be fierce 
fighters — a member of A Company, 3d Platoon, 
First Black Watch, stationed in the trenches in 
northern France. Late in the summer of the 
same year Andrew C. Imbrie, secretary of the 
Princeton class of '95, received a letter from 
Poe, dated July 24, in which he acknowledged 
the receipt of no fewer than one hundred and 
thirty post-cards, "so far," from his classmates, 
the suggestion for such a demonstration of the 
affection and esteem in which Johnny Poe was 
held by his fellows having been made by Imbrie 
in the previous spring. Poe wrote: "I am try- 
ing to feel more at home in a kilt; and while 



80 WITH FAMOUS BRITISH REGIMENTS 

they are cool, the legs get dirty for quite a way 
above the knees." He went on as follows: 

Of course we are going to win; but the 
"Limburgers" are putting up a great fight. 
What business have the "Square Heads" to 
start on the downward course the Empire which 
weathered the Spanish Armada, the Dutch 
under De Ruyter and Von Trump, the " Grand 
Monarch" and Napoleon? 

Aren't you sorry I'm such a shark on history ? 

The Black Watch carried a German trench 
on May 9th after several regiments had tried 
and failed. It was taken with the piper play- 
ing the "Hieland Laddie." 

A month after this letter was written Johnny 
Poe was killed in a charge of the Black Watch 
before Hullock, in northern France, eight or 
ten miles east of Bethune, a part of the great 
drive of the Allies in the last week of Septem- 
ber. A letter to Poe's brother, Edgar Allan 
Poe, from the captain, D. Lumsden, of Poe's 
company, dated November 25, 1915, and repro- 
duced in the Princeton Alumni Weekly, gave 
some details as to how Poe met his end: 

In reply to your letter of the 11th of No- 
vember, I have made inquiries about your 



JOHN P. POE, OF THE BLACK WATCH 81 

brother's death. He was killed on September 
25 in the big engagement, while he was work- 
ing with brigade bombers. He was advancing 
with bombs to another regiment when he was 
hit by a bullet and killed instantly. This hap- 
pened roughly at 7 a.m., soon after the great 
advance began, and he is buried with several of 
his comrades on the left of the place called 
"Lone Tree," and a mound marks the grave. 

I was greatly grieved to hear that he had 
been killed, as he was all that a good man and 
soldier could be. He was the most willing 
worker in my company and was in my platoon 
before I took command of the company when 
our captain was killed. 

I offer you and all his relatives and friends 
my deepest sympathies on your great loss. But 
it is a comfort to think that he had lived a fine 
life in the finest way a man can. 

The evidence of another officer is quoted that 
Poe "was the most popular fellow in the com- 
pany, having been offered promotion, but he 
refused it," preferring as always to fight in the 
ranks. Poe Field at Princeton, with its memo- 
rial flagstaff, from which the national colors 
always fly, attests Poe's popularity among his 
college mates. His relation to football was such 
that there was a peculiar appropriateness in 
the Memorial Football Cup which in 1916 his 



82 WITH FAMOUS BRITISH REGIMENTS 

mother presented to Princeton, to be given 
each year to that member of the team who 
exemplified in the highest degree the traits 
which were conspicuous in Poe himself — (1) 
loyalty and devotion to Princeton's football in- 
terests; (2) courage, manliness, self-control, and 
modesty; (3) perseverance and determination 
under discouraging conditions, and (4) obser- 
vance of the rules of the game and fairness 
toward opponents. 



IX 

DILLWYN P. STARR, OF THE COLDSTREAM 
GUARDS 

IT is doubtful if any one of the American 
youths who entered the war in its early 
stages in behalf of the Allies saw more varied 
service than did Dillwyn Parrish Starr, of Phila- 
delphia, whose father, Dr. Louis Starr, has had 
printed for private circulation a memorial vol- 
ume, "The War Story of Dillwyn Parrish 
Starr." For at first Starr drove an ambulance 
in Richard Norton's corps in northern France 
and in Flanders; then he served with an English 
armored motor-car squadron, under the com- 
mand of the Duke of Westminster, in Flanders; 
then, from early in the summer of 1915 until 
November, he was in charge of a motor-car 
squadron in Gallipoli; finally on his return he 
joined the Coldstream Guards, accepted a com- 
mission as second lieutenant, and was killed 
while gallantly leading two platoons in a charge 

83 



st WITH FAMOUS BRITISH REGIMENTS 

od September 15, 1916, having seen two years 
of varied service. At the time of his death he 
had reached 1 1 » < ^ rank of first lieutenant. 

Shirr's desire al the outset was, as \u x ex- 
pressed it, "to see the war," and so great was 
his eagerness to get to the field of operations 
that he shipped as a sailor on the liner Hamburg, 
which the American Red Cross senl abroad the 
middle of September, L914. By the end of 
October he was driving an ambulance, a power- 
ful Mercedes, on the Belgian frontier. Starr's 
experience In the ambulance service opened his 

eves to the nature 4 of the struggle upon which 

the Allies had entered and to the real character 
of their enemy, and made him Long, as he said 
later, "to gel al them with cold steel." 

When, therefore, an opportunity came to 
effeel a transfer to the British Armored Car 
Division, he grasped it eagerly. Early in 

March, 1915, Starr was near the British front 

lines in northern Prance, as one of the crew of a 
heavy armored ear carrying a three-pound gun, 
in the squadron under the Duke of Westmin- 
ster, An entry in his diary, with its amusing 
anticlimax in the last sentence, describes the 



DILLWYN PARRISH STARR 85 

work of his car in a fight near \euve Chapelle, 
southeast of Armentieres: 

March 13. Hot day! Up at 3 A. m. and 

mi guard. Shells still passing over and Tailing 
in town [Laventie]. The Duke came at J) 
o'clock to take us out. Wen I in same direction 
as yesterday afternoon but to more advanced 
post. Heavy fighting going on. Took up po- 
sition 2()() yards south of cross-roads al Fau- 
quissart, behind some buildings thai were half 
battered down. (Jot range of house occupied 
by Germans who were holding up our advance 
and tired forty-two shells, all telling and driving 
I hem out. They were shot down by OUT in- 
fantry, who occupied what, was left of the 
building a short time afterward. Enemy artil- 
lery found ns, and their shells began dropping 
all about us; also under rifle fire and had to 
keep cover. Shells were striking ten yards 
away in the mini, and one splashed water into 
the car. Finally obliged to back away, as road 
too cramped to turn; moved very slowly and i' 
seemed we were going to get it sure — close 
squeeze! Got back to Laventie at 11 o'clock, 
and in afternoon painted car and had my haircut. 

Like Johnny Poe of the Black Watch, Dill 
Starr, as he was called by his classmates at 
Harvard, where he was graduated in 1908, was 
a football player of note, having won a place 



86 WITH FAMOUS BRITISH REGIMENTS 

on the university team. A far-away echo of his 
gridiron days is heard occasionally in his diary. 
Thus he notes, in anticipation of immediate 
active service: 

In afternoon were told to get some sleep and 
I did, sitting in chair. At four o'clock had tea. 
Thinking of going out gives me the same feeling 
as before a football match. 

Nearly a year and a half later, when he was 
a lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards, in 
France, a match game of soccer, of which Starr 
knew little or nothing, was arranged with a 
team from the crack rival regiment in the 
British service, the Grenadier Guards. Starr 
was persuaded, much against his will, to play 
with his fellow Coldstreamers, with this result: 

The match with the Grenadiers came out a 
tie. I was lucky enough to make a goal for 
our side in the last thirty seconds. The score 
was three all. 

In May Starr was gazetted sublieutenant in 
the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserves, and in 
June, after a period of further study in gunnery, 
he sailed, with another officer and twenty-five 



DILLWYN PARRISH STARR 87 

men, for Gallipoli. The evidence of Starr's let- 
ters and diary will be valuable to the historian 
who seeks the causes for the ghastly failure of 
that campaign. They were, in a sentence, 
according to Starr, bad organization, bad man- 
agement, lack of foresight and lack of energy. 
Having landed, the middle of July, 1915, at 
Cape Helles, he outlined the situation as it 
appeared to him a week later: 

This is the most wonderful looking place I 
ever saw, the whole ground is covered with 
dugouts, and even the mules have their little 
shelters. The hill, iVchi Baba, is only about 
three miles away, so you can imagine how far 
we have advanced. On the first day of the 
landing we were further advanced than we are 
now; the troops, you see, had no food, water, 
etc., so they had to fall back after the first rush. 
The Turks shell the Peninsula very often, but 
don't do an awful lot of damage. 

Of the costly and futile attack by the British 
on the hill of Achi Baba, early in the following 
August, Starr wrote: 

Well, the attack has been made and was a 
complete failure here. Almost four thousand 
men went out and very few came back. Some 



88 WITH FAMOUS BRITISH REGIMENTS 

monitors and ships bombarded Achi Baba for 
two hours. The Turks during this moved 
down into a gully and came back after it to 
their second line and massed four deep to meet 
our men. I was on higher ground with four 
guns and could clearly see our charges of the 
6th and the morning of the 7th. The men 
went out in a hail of bullets and it was a won- 
derful sight to see them. Many of them fell 
close to our parapets, though a good number 
reached the Turkish trenches, there to be killed. 
On the morning of the 7th the Turks made a 
counter attack and drove our men out of the 
lightly -held trenches they had taken. Our 
guns fortunately took a lot of them; my two 
guns fired a thousand rounds into their closely 
formed mass. 



Under orders Starr returned to England late 
in November, to find that the Armored Car 
Division had been disbanded. At the sugges- 
tion of his college mate, Walter G. Oakman, 
Jr., who had been with him in both the ambu- 
lance service and the Armored Car Division, 
and who was then in the Coldstream Guards, 
Starr decided to accept a commission, which 
had been offered to him, as second lieutenant in 
the same regiment, one of the most famous in 
the British Army. He thereupon went into 



DILLWYN PARRISH STARR 89 

strict training which lasted six months, until 
midsummer, 1916. Having similar tastes, espe- 
cially in sports, he fraternized cordially with his 
fellow officers, fell in easily with the traditions 
of the regiment, and looked forward with eager- 
ness to the time when he could lead his men 
in a charge. To do this was the highest point 
which his ambition as a soldier touched. 

The regiment saw some trench work in Au- 
gust and early in September, but was in no 
serious engagement until the middle of the 
month. Under date of September 11, four 
days before he was killed, Starr wrote a letter 
to his friend, Harold S. Vanderbilt, in the 
course of which he said: 

I came out to France on the 11th day of 
July and am now in the 2nd Battalion Cold- 
stream Guards. We expect to have a very hot 
time within the next few days. I believe we 
are going to hop the parapet, so there is a good 
chance of my getting back to England with a 
"blighty" within the next week. There is a 
lot of hell popping about here and the artillery 
fire is something stupendous. 

Things are looking a little better for the Allies 
now, although it is not over yet by a long 
shot. 



90 WITH FAMOUS BRITISH REGIMENTS 

The last letter from him was written the fol- 
lowing day, September 12. In it Starr said: 

They hope here that we shall break through 
the German lines, but I have my doubts. There 
is a chance, however, and if we do it will make 
all the difference in the world. 

They didn't break through, but they attained 
their immediate objective, making possible the 
capture of Les-Bceufs the next day. 

On the 15th the three battalions of the Cold- 
stream Guards attacked the enemy near Ginchy, 
a few miles east of Albert. They drove the 
Germans out of their three lines of trenches, 
but at heavy cost, a nest of machine-guns, 
which the British tanks had failed to silence, 
taking a frightful toll of lives. Lieutenant 
Starr, leading his two platoons, was caught by 
this enfilading fire and killed as he sprang upon 
the parapet of the first German trench. 

In a letter written from the hospital to Dr. 
Starr, Corporal Philip Andrews, of Starr's pla- 
toon, described this charge: 

The order then came to charge the trench; 
in that he got hit while leading us in the charge. 



DILLWYN PARRISH STARR 91 

I did not see him fall, but was told while in the 
captured trench that he had been shot through 
the heart. We all knew we had lost a splendid 
leader who knew no fear. He knew, and so 
did I, that we should have a terrible fight to 
gain the trench, but he was cool and cheered 
up all his men, and I am sorry he did not live 
to see the spirit he had put into them in the 
final charge. He died a hero, always in front 
of us. 

Colonel Drummond-Hay, commanding the 
Coldstream Guards, wrote to Dr. Starr: 

Previously to the War we had ties which kept 
the Regiment in very friendly touch with the 
U. S. A., but now we are bound to you by a 
very much closer bond, your son, and others 
like him, who never rested till they were able 
to give us their active assistance in upholding 
the honor of the Regiment in this tremendous 
War, and this will never be forgotten in the 
Regiment, as long as its name endures. 

To have voluntarily given his life as your son 
has done for the cause of right and in support 
of an abstract principle, is quite the noblest 
thing a man can do. It is far higher than giv- 
ing it in fighting to safeguard one's own Hearth 
and Home, and for the maintenance of the 
Empire of which one is one's self a unit. And, 
believe me, we greatly appreciate this spirit in 
which so many Americans are fighting on our 
side. 



PART III 
THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN SERVIA 



X 

DR. RYAN UNDER FIRE AT BELGRADE 

THE young American volunteers in the 
trenches held no monopoly of the quality 
of high courage in the face of great danger. 
The surgeons and nurses of the American Red 
Cross possessed this trait also. They had occa- 
sion to show it in Servia when, at the outbreak 
of the war, the Austrians fell upon that unfor- 
tunate little country, which sent out a cry for 
help that the American Red Cross was quick 
to answer. Early in September, 1914, the 
first of three Servian units sailed from New 
York and, reaching Greece, went direct to Bel- 
grade. The surgeon in charge was Dr. Edward 
W. Ryan, of Scranton, a graduate of the Ford- 
ham University Medical School and a man of 
wide experience in administrative as well as in 
hospital work. Dr. Ryan's two assistants, also 
graduates of the same medical school, were Dr. 
James C. Donovan and Dr. William P. Ahern. 

95 



96 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN SERVIA 

They were accompanied by twelve trained 
nurses and carried abundant hospital supplies. 
Under date of October 20, four days after 
the arrival of the unit in Belgrade, Dr. Ryan 
wrote to the Red Cross headquarters in Wash- 
ington as follows of the conditions as he found 
them: 

We arrived at this place on October 16 and 
were immediately put in charge of the big hos- 
pital here. Since starting we have had no time 
for anything but work and sleep. Many of the 
wounded had not been dressed for several days, 
and as we have about 150 and it is necessary 
to dress them every day, it is 11 o'clock before 
we get through and some nights later. . . . 
The cases turned over to us are in many in- 
stances of long standing and require constant 
attention. New cases are arriving steadily and 
we will be overrun in a very short time. Sur- 
geons are scarce here, and as we have about 
50,000 wounded scattered about the country, 
you can readily see what the conditions are. 

Belgrade contained about 120,000 inhabi- 
tants. In the early months of the war the city, 
which lies on the south bank of the Danube, 
changed hands several times before the Ser- 
vians evacuated it finally, being subjected to 



DR. RYAN UNDER FIRE AT BELGRADE 97 

three bombardments. The military hospital, of 
which Dr. Ryan took charge on his arrival, was 
on a high hill overlooking the city and was 
frequently under fire. 

The following weeks were full of exciting ex- 
periences for the American surgeons and their 
nurses. In a letter written from Nish, under 
date of December 26, and published in the 
Red Cross Magazine, Dr. Ryan described what 
had occurred. Since November 25, he said, he 
had had under his care in Belgrade five hospi- 
tals with about forty buildings, being assisted 
by about nine Servian doctors and one hundred 
and fifty nurses, and having about one thou- 
sand two hundred patients. He was also in 
charge of the insane hospital and the civil, sur- 
gical, and medical hospitals in the city. He 
continued : 

When the Servians evacuated Belgrade they 
turned everything over to me. When you 
think that they came to me at 2 o'clock in the 
morning and said they were all going away and 
I was supposed to remain and take charge of 
all the hospitals, you can imagine my feelings. 
I did the best I could for and with them. When 
the Austrians came in, the non-combatant Ser- 



98 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN SERVIA 

vians all came to me for food. I had to get 
bread for about 6,000 poor people every day, 
some of which I bought, but the greater part of 
which was given to me by the Austrians. 

When the Servian troops left they took with 
them about 200 of our patients, leaving 100 
behind. Five days after the Austrians arrived 
I had 3,000 patients, all very seriously wounded 
and many with frozen hands and feet that neces- 
sitated amputation. Many of them had been 
on the road six or seven days before we got 
them, and many did not even have the first 
dressing. 

Before the Servians retook Belgrade 6,000 
wounded passed through my hands. As it was 
impossible to handle them, I told the Austrians 
they would have to send them into the interior 
of Hungary, which they did. When they left 
they took with them all of their wounded with 
the exception of 514 which I still have. 

In addition to these men, Dr. Ryan had in 
his care when he wrote about 250 Servian 
wounded. "The Servians," he added, "are 
very grateful, and when you remember that 
they have about 60,000 wounded of their own, 
every little helps." 



XI 
FIGHTING TYPHUS AT GEVGELIA 

IN view of the conditions in Servia two more 
units of the American Red Cross were des- 
patched the middle of November to the as- 
sistance of Dr. Ryan. They were under the 
charge of Dr. Ethan Flagg Butler and of 
Dr. Ernest P. Magruder, both of Washington, 
D. C, Dr. Butler having general control of the 
force. Assisting them were Drs. James F. 
Donnelly, of Brooklyn, Clapham P. King, of 
Annapolis, and Morton P. Lane, of New Or- 
leans, with twelve trained nurses. As the 
Servian Government h?,d established itself at 
Nish, it was decided that these two new sur- 
gical units should make their headquarters at 
Gevgelia, a town of about 7,000 inhabitants on 
the railway running south from Nish to Saloniki 
on the Greek coast. 

Dr. Butler and his staff reached Gevgelia in 
December, and found themselves face to face 

99 



100 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN SERVIA 

with a difficult situation. The following ex- 
tract from a private letter from Dr. Butler, 
dated Christmas day, which was published in 
the Princeton Alumni Weekly — Dr. Butler was 
graduated at Princeton in 1906 — defined the 
situation : 

Now we have on our hands some thousand 
or so wounded, both Servian and Austrian, in 
a large tobacco factory. There is no need to 
say more than that Sherman must just have 
come from a military hospital when he uttered 
his trite description of war. We are, however, 
taking over an old storage house wherein 
there have been no patients and which, there- 
fore, comes into our hands sweet and clean. 
In this we hope to establish a couple of oper- 
ating rooms, and ward space for 175 patients, 
choosing for this building the more severely 
wounded. 

The greatest need that confronted Dr. Butler 
was for an abundant supply of pure water. 
Even the surgeons and nurses were under the 
necessity of making "an occasional run for a 
not bath and a glass of water" to Saloniki, a 
morning's ride on the rail way- train. At this 
time no infectious or contagious disease had 
made its appearance, but Dr. Butler saw 



FIGHTING TYPHUS AT GEVGELIA 101 

clearly that the conditions were such as to 
breed a veritable pestilence. In a second let- 
ter he wrote: 

Yet we are going to stick to the game and 
beat them in spite of themselves. We will just 
hammer, hammer at the local authorities and 
at the Government in Nish, until they let us 
make a clean place of this and keep it clean. 

Not many weeks passed after this before the 
situation became desperate, owing to the out- 
break and rapid spread of the dreaded typhus 
and typhoid fevers in and around Gevgelia, 
where the sanitary conditions were about as 
bad as they could be. The pestilence attacked 
the members of the two American units. Dr. 
Butler himself was the only one of the Ameri- 
can surgeons who escaped an attack, more or 
less severe, of typhus, and at one time no fewer 
than nine of his twelve nurses were typhus pa- 
tients at Gevgelia. Although he was author- 
ized by cable to transfer his entire staff to 
Saloniki, Dr. Butler stuck resolutely and cou- 
rageously to his post in Gevgelia, and, with four 
of his party in the delirium that accompanies 
typhus, could write in this admirably restrained 



102 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN SERVIA 

temper to the home office of the American Red 
Cross : 

In regard to the present personnel of the 
units, I do not advise withdrawal or even 
change of location within Servia, but I feel that 
before other members are sent to this country 
your office should weigh seriously the risks that 
everyone will have to run — risks from disease 
that are considered rightfully preventable in 
our home country — and decide whether or not 
the units are to be kept up to their full quota 
or allowed to gradually decrease in number as 
one after another the original members become 
sick and are invalided home. I am sure, from 
the events of the past two weeks, that it is 
only a question of time before each member 
contracts some sickness of sufficient gravity to 
make his or her return to America necessary. 

Two of the American surgeons succumbed to 
the disease. Dr. Donnelly died on February 
22, and Dr. Magruder, who had been trans- 
ferred to Belgrade to assist Dr. Ryan, died 
early in April. It was the privilege of Sir 
Thomas Lipton, who saw Dr. Donnelly when 
he was ill, to carry out his last wishes. One of 
these was that if he did not pull through he 
should be buried with the American and Red 



FIGHTING TYPHUS AT GEVGELIA 103 

Cross flags wrapped around his body. A recent 
financial report of the American Red Cross 
records a substantial sum as set aside for pen- 
sions to the widows of these two surgeons who 
gave their lives to the cause of humanity. 

Meanwhile help was being sent to Dr. Butler 
by the American Red Cross. In response to a 
call for volunteers Dr. Reynold M. Kirby- 
Smith, of Sewanee, Tennessee, and three nurses 
left their station at Pau, France, and hastened 
to Gevgelia. In February Dr. Earl B. Downer, 
of Lansing, Michigan, left the United States, 
also under Red Cross auspices, to go to the aid 
of Dr. Butler, and in March more trained 
nurses were despatched on the same mission. 
Typhus, however, had become too virulent and 
too wide-spread to be combated successfully by 
so small a force, and steps were at once taken to 
organize and to send to Servia a sanitary com- 
mission for the express purpose of stamping out 
the plague from which thousands had already 
died. 

Dr. Kirby-Smith, Dr. Butler, and Dr. Downer, 
leaving Gevgelia to be taken care of by the 
Sanitary Commission, went to Belgrade to the 



104 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN SERVIA 

assistance of Dr. Ryan, who meanwhile had 
fallen ill with typhus. Summarizing later the 
work of the American Red Cross in Belgrade, 
Dr. Downer stated that in little over a year 
20,000 sick and wounded, including all nation- 
alities, had been cared for. "During the recent 
German invasion," he said, "we cared for 4,000 
wounded in a period of thirty days." Describ- 
ing the daily routine of himself and Dr. Butler, 
he said: 

In the month of April Dr. Ethan F. Butler 
and myself did all the surgical and medical 
work of the hospital. We operated each day 
from 8 a. m. to 2 p. m., and after that visited 
800 patients. This was our daily routine. 
Each day we made a rigid search of the wards 
for new typhus cases, which were promptly sent 
to the isolation hospital. At this time most of 
our nurses and doctors, including the director, 
Dr. Ryan, were ill from typhus. Dr. Reynold 
M. Kirby-Smith, who was in charge at this 
time, took care of the executive work of the 
hospital. 

With the Servians Dr. Ryan had become a 
popular hero. To him they gave the credit 
for saving the city of Belgrade from being pil- 
laged and burned by the Austrian troops. The 



FIGHTING TYPHUS AT GEVGELIA 105 

London Times confirmed this view, saying that 
it was due to his "fearless, determined interven- 
tion that the city was not destroyed and that 
an even greater number of women and children 
were not carried off into captivity." He kept 
on good terms, moreover, with the invaders, 
who sent him no fewer than 3,000 wounded 
soldiers in one day for treatment ! 



XII 

CONQUERING THE PLAGUE OF TYPHUS 

THE story of how the plague of typhus in 
Servia was conquered by American scientific 
knowledge, organization, and energy, the cost 
of practically the whole undertaking being met 
by American money, forms one of the most 
dramatic chapters in the history of modern 
sanitary science. The disease became epidemic 
in January, 1915, in the northwestern part of 
Servia among the Austrian prisoners of war, 
who were greatly crowded together and who 
were compelled to live under the most insani- 
tary conditions. As these prisoners were sent 
and as infected native Servians travelled to other 
parts of the country, the disease spread rapidly, 
reaching its height in April, when no fewer than 
nine thousand new cases a day were reported. 

In this emergency the American Red Cross 
organized a sanitary commission, for the leader- 
ship of which Dr. Richard P. Strong, professor 
of tropical diseases in the Medical School of 

106 



CONQUERING THE PLAGUE OF TYPHUS 107 

Harvard University, was selected. Dr. Strong, 
who was a graduate of Yale of the class of 1893, 
had proved, in the Philippines and in Man- 
churia, his capacity for just this sort of work. 
The commission was financed by contributions 
from the Rockefeller Foundation, the American 
Red Cross, and private sources, chiefly at Har- 
vard and at Yale. The membership consisted 
of twelve physicians and sanitary experts, who 
sailed for Naples early in April, Dr. Strong hav- 
ing preceded them by several weeks. 

All sorts of supplies were taken, one item in 
the list being fifty-four tons of sulphur for dis- 
infecting purposes. Later, in May, in response 
to appeals from Dr. Strong for more assistance, 
a supplementary force of twenty-five sanitary 
experts under Dr. Edward Stuart, of Oklahoma, 
was despatched to Servia, and by July the total 
American membership of the commission had 
been increased to forty-three. A great mass 
of additional supplies was also forwarded, in- 
cluding 125 tons of sulphur and fifteen tons of 
artesian-well apparatus. 

England, France, and Russia were as keenly 
alive as was America to the danger to all Europe 



108 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN SERVIA 

which lay in the dreaded typhus epidemic and 
had sent sanitary experts and physicians to 
Servia. Reaching Nish, Dr. Strong, with the 
co-operation of the medical men from these 
countries and of such Servian doctors — more 
than a hundred native physicians succumbed 
to the disease before it was conquered — as 
could be spared for the work, organized an 
International Health Board, of which he be- 
came the medical director. With full authority 
from the Servian Government to take any 
measures necessary to stamp out the plague, 
Dr. Strong divided the country for sanitary 
purposes into fourteen districts. The French, 
English, and Russian physicians took charge of 
seven of these districts; the Americans the re- 
mainder. 

The methods that modern sanitary science 
employs when it becomes necessary to save 
not a community but a whole people from the 
ravages of a pestilence, are well illustrated by 
Dr. Strong's report to the American Red Cross: 

As typhus is conveyed from man to man by 
vermin (the bite of the body louse) the bathing 
and disinfection of very large numbers of 




Copyright by Underwood & Underwood. 

Doctor Kit-hard P. Strong. 



CONQUERING THE PLAGUE OF TYPHUS 109 

people and immediate disinfection of their 
clothing in a short period of time was an im- 
portant problem in combating the disease. For 
this purpose sanitary trains consisting each of 
three converted railroad cars were fitted up. 
One car contained a huge boiler which supplied 
the steam for disinfection of the clothing. In 
a second car fifteen shower baths were con- 
structed. A third car was converted into a 
huge autoclave (disinfector), into which steam 
could be turned under automatic pressure. In 
this manner the vermin were immediately de- 
stroyed and the clothes thoroughly disinfected. 
f Large tents were erected beside the railroad 
sidings on which the cars were placed. The 
people were marched by the thousands to these 
tents, their hair was clipped, and a limited 
number undressed themselves, carried their 
clothes to the disinfecting car, and then passed 
to the car containing the shower baths. After 
a thorough scrubbing with soap and water they 
were sprayed with petroleum as an extra pre- 
caution for destroying the vermin. They then 
received their disinfected clothing. In many 
instances in which the clothing was very badly 
soiled fresh clothing was supplied. Many of 
these people stated that they had not bathed 
for ten months or longer. Their faces in some 
instances betrayed surprise and in others fear 
when the water touched their bodies. 

In the larger cities and in those situated 
away from the railway, disinfecting and bath- 
ing plants were established and separate hours 



110 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN SERVIA 

were arranged for bathing women and men in 
large numbers. 

In many towns the clothes were disinfected 
by baking them in ovens, either specially con- 
structed for this purpose or those which had 
been built previously for the baking of bricks 
or for other purposes. As all the hospitals 
were infected, it was necessary to systematically 
disinfect these and the inmates. 

As cholera threatened to develop, vaccination 
against cholera and typhoid fever was made 
compulsory in Servia, and vaccination trains 
and parties travelled all over the country for 
this purpose. Dr. Strong's activity during this 
campaign was prodigious. Here is a letter in 
which he describes his experiences one night 
late in May, while returning, with several com- 
panions and a guard, from a visit by horseback 
and carriage to a hospital in Pech, in Monte- 
negro, the carriages having been sent on ahead 
of the party: 

I forgot to mention that I had an escort of 
six gendarmes with me because we were passing 
through a territory which is on the Albanian 
border, and the Albanians are very unfriendly 
to the Montenegrins. The gendarme in com- 
mand begged me not to camp in the open, say- 



CONQUERING THE PLAGUE OF TYPHUS 111 

ing it was very dangerous to do so. However, 
as I had not slept for twenty-eight hours, I did 
not feel like going on at that hour of the night 
and spending it at an infected hotel. We there- 
fore insisted on remaining that night in the 
open. A camp-fire was started and Mr. Brink 
made some coffee and fried some bacon. This 
we ate, together with a tin of salmon and some 
biscuits. 

Our meal had hardly been finished before a 
curious incident happened. A man, screaming 
with all his lung-power, came running into our 
vicinity, chased by an Albanian with a rifle in 
his hands. This man claimed, as we found out 
later, that the Albanian was trying to kill him. 
It seems the Albanian had seen our camp fire 
and had crossed the border to find out what 
it meant. We gave him something to eat and 
he at once became very friendly. By signs he 
intimated to us we should put the camp fire 
out and lie down and go to sleep. In fact he 
several times tried to put the fire out himself, 
and kept pointing to the Albanian frontier, 
every once in a while raising his rifle as if about 
to fire, indicating, we presumed, that we were 
in danger. 

As the rain was now pouring down we de- 
cided to go to bed. We had no tents with us, 
but had the canvas covers for our hammocks. 
We spread our bedding on the ground and then 
climbed under the canvas. The rain fell heavily 
all night long. I was wet through, and found 
next morning that my pocketbook had been so 



112 THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN SERVIA 

badly soaked that my passport which it con- 
tained was damaged and that the pigment on 
the red seal had smeared on the paper. We 
heard some shooting in the night, but no shots 
were exchanged. A little before 4 a. m. we 
crawled out of our beds. It was still raining. 
We rolled up the water-soaked bedding and left 
it there on the plain to be sent for and started 
on our walk to the town of Djakovitza, which 
we reached about 5.45 o'clock. The command- 
ing officer in the town was scandalized to hear 
that we had camped in the open on the Alba- 
nian border. He said it not only was very un- 
safe but that no one had done such a thing for 
many years; that our experience would go down 
in history. We, however, preferred to take the 
risk of being shot to sleeping in a typhus- 
infected hotel. 

The battle lasted fully six months before the 
scourge was finally conquered. Dr. Strong's 
estimate was that from 135,000 to 150,000 per- 
sons died in Servia from the disease. In the 
end science won. On his return to the United 
States in the autumn Dr. Strong announced 
that in the last three weeks of his stay in Ser- 
via not a single new case of typhus had been 
reported. 



PART IV 
AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 



XIII 

RICHARD NORTON'S MOTOR-AMBULANCE 
CORPS 

THE foremost figure among the scores of 
American university men who, in 1914, 
1915, and 1916, gave their services to the am- 
bulance corps in France, Belgium, and the 
Near East, was Richard Norton. Graduated 
at Harvard in 1892, the son of Professor Charles 
Eliot Norton, he had become an archaeologist 
of note, and for eight years was director of the 
American School of Classical Studies at Rome. 
The Great War summoned him from these scho- 
lastic pursuits into active field-work in behalf 
of humanity; and his response to this summons 
was immediate. Soon after the war began he 
went to London and organized the American 
Volunteer Motor- Ambulance Corps. By Octo- 
ber, 1914, ten of his ambulances were at work, 
at first under the auspices of the British Red 
Cross and the St. John Ambulance, the drivers 
being recent graduates of American colleges. 

115 



116 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

From this modest beginning the number of 
the ambulances over which Mr. Norton exer- 
cised supervision was gradually increased as 
more funds were forthcoming. Finally it was 
found to be desirable to associate the corps 
with the American Red Cross and to place its 
cars under the direct control of the French 
Army. 

To the young Americans who drove these 
ambulances Mr. Norton, being their senior by 
many years, was more like an elder brother 
than a commanding officer. In his relations 
with them his principal task was of a double 
character — to teach them to keep out of un- 
necessary danger and at the same time to in- 
spire them, by example as well as by precept, 
with a high courage to run any risk in the per- 
formance of a real duty. That he succeeded in 
this by no means easy task is evident from the 
feeling of loyalty, devotion, and admiration 
which all the young men who served under him 
brought back to America. 

An anecdote is told of him which illustrates 
admirably the manner in which he controlled 
and tempered the overeager spirits of the 



RICHARD NORTON'S MOTOR CORPS 117 

youths under him. One evening, so the story 
goes, Norton found one of his young ambulance 
drivers a considerable distance from the head- 
quarters of the section absorbed in watching a 
French battery near by in action. Taken to 
task by his chief, the boy admitted frankly that 
he had been drawn thither by a great curiosity 
to see the big guns in action. 

"Yes," commented Norton, in effect, "that 
was natural. I've had that feeling myself. 
But consider, for a moment, the possible conse- 
quences. Sooner or later the Germans will find 
this battery, and a shell may blow you to 
pieces, or a fragment destroy your eyesight or 
cause the loss of an arm or a leg. And if that 
happens the French officials will merely shrug 
their shoulders and say, 'Another one of those 
reckless Americans throwing away his life for 
nothing'; and that will be the end of you. 

"On the other hand, if you are wounded 
while in the performance of duty you will be 
cited for bravery and may receive the Croix de 
Guerre; and if you are killed, the French will 
pay you every honor at their command. Which 
seems to be the sensible choice to make ? " 



118 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

Put in this dramatic way, the lesson of avoid- 
ing unnecessary risk was quickly learned. 

From the several letters from Mr. Norton to 
his brother Eliot in New York, which are 
printed in Mr. M. A. De Wolfe Howe's volume, 
"Harvard Volunteers in Europe," it is possible 
to construct a reasonably complete picture of 
the important work which Norton was able to 
do in the early years of the war. 

Writing from La Croix, Champagne, under 
date of October 14, 1915, Norton summarized 
the work which his corps of ambulances had 
done during the year: 

As it is just a year since the Corps came 
into being, it is worth remembering what we 
started from and what we have developed into. 
Notwithstanding errors of judgment or acci- 
dents, we have accomplished good work. A 
year ago we started from London with our cars, 
and not much more than hope for a bank bal- 
ance. We were wanderers searching for work. 
During this year we have grown into a corps 
consisting now of some sixty cars, to which the 
St. John Ambulance and Red Cross Societies 
render any assistance we ask, and instead of 
wondering where we were to find occupation 
the French authorities have intrusted us with the 
whole ambulance service of the llth Army corps. 



RICHARD NORTON'S MOTOR CORPS 119 

. . . We have carried during the year just 
under twenty-eight thousand cases, and during 
the days from the 25th of September to the 
9th of October, our cars relieved the sufferings 
of over six thousand individuals. . . . 

The period referred to in the last sentence 
was that of the great French drive in Cham- 
pagne, in which, as we have seen, young Farns- 
worth, of the Foreign Legion, was killed. Se- 
lections from Norton's description in the same 
letter of the work of his ambulance corps dur- 
ing this battle follow: 

For three days before the 25th of Septem- 
ber, an incessant cannonade, continued by night 
and day, showed that the region round Tahure 
was the one selected for attacking the Germans. 
It was on the twenty-fourth that we received 
final orders to move up to the lines, and to 
station our cars at the field hospitals and the 
trenches. . . . 

Before we actually took up our positions I 
had been over the ground to get the lay of the 
land, to see where the various trails — they were 
scarcely more — led to, in order to know how 
best to direct the ambulances on their various 
errands. The country was absolutely packed; 
I can scarcely find any word to suggest a pic- 
ture of how packed it was with troops and 
munition trains. There was every sort and 



120 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

description. On the rolling land, over which 
the trenches, cut in through chalk soil, ran like 
great white snakes, the batteries of every sized 
gun were innumerable. I cannot tell you how 
many guns there were, but, in a radius of half 
a mile from where my ambulances stood the 
first night, there were at least a dozen batteries 
of various calibers, and they were no thicker 
there than anywhere else. We tried to sleep 
on the stretchers for an hour or two before 
dawn of the twenty-fifth, but when you have 
a battery of "150's" coughing uninterruptedly 
within less than one hundred yards of where 
you are resting, to say nothing of other guns to 
right and to left of you, one's repose is decidedly 
syncopated. On the morning of the twenty- 
fifth the cannonade slackened, and we knew 
afterward that the three previous days' work 
had battered the German lines into a shapeless 
mass, and that the French infantry had made 
good the chance they had been patiently wait- 
ing for all summer of proving to the world 
their ability to beat the Germans. . . . 

It is curious that only three or four inci- 
dents of the twelve hard days' work stand out 
clearly in my mind. The rest is but a hazy 
memory of indistinguishable nights and days, 
cold and rain, long rows of laden stretchers 
waiting to be put into the cars, wavering lines 
of less seriously wounded hobbling along to 
where we were waiting, sleepy hospital order- 
lies, dark underground chambers in which the 
doctors were sorting out and caring for the 



RICHARD NORTON'S MOTOR CORPS 121 

wounded, and an unceasing noise of rumbling 
wagons, whirring aeroplanes, distant guns cough- 
ing and nearby ones crashing, shells bursting 
and bullets hissing. Out of this general jum- 
ble of memory one feature shines out steadily 
clear; it is of the doctors. Patient, indefatiga- 
ble, tender, encouraging and brave in the most 
perfect way, they were everywhere in the fore- 
front and seemingly knew not what fatigue 
meant. . . . 

After describing a few of the incidents that 
impressed themselves upon his memory, Mr. 
Norton continued: 

Still another picture that rises in my mind, 
as I write, is of one cloudy morning, when, after 
a very tiring night, I was sitting on the road- 
side watching a rather heavy bombardment 
near by, and suddenly through the din rose the 
sweet clear notes of a shepherd's pipe. It was 
the same reed-pipe I have heard so often on 
the hills of Greece and Asia Minor, and the 
same sweetly -sad, age-old shepherd music tell- 
ing of Pan and the Nymphs, and the asphodel 
meadows where Youth lies buried. The piper 
was an ordinary piou-piou, a simple fantasin, 
rnon vieux Charles, with knapsack on back, rifle 
slung over his shoulder and helmet on head 
strolling down to the valley of death a few hun- 
dred yards beyond. Nor is this the only music 
I have heard. One night a violin sounded 



122 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

among the pines which shelter our tents, and I 
strolled over to find a blue-clad Orpheus easing 
the pain of the wounded and numbing the 
fatigue of the brancardiers with bits of Chopin 
and Schubert and Beethoven. 

Such are some of the impressions of the 
battle seen from this side of the line. Others I 
have formed since the main fight ceased, in the 
lines previously held by the Germans. I went 
over some of their trenches the other day and 
have never seen anything so horrible. Al- 
though, as prisoners have told us, they knew 
they were to be attacked, they had no idea that 
the attack would be anything like so severe as 
it was. Those I have talked to said it was 
awful, and that they were glad to be out of it. 
Their trenches were very elaborately con- 
structed, many of the dugouts being fitted up 
with considerable furniture, the dwellers evi- 
dently having no notion they would be hur- 
riedly evicted. After the bombardment there 
was nothing left of all this careful work. The 
whole earth was torn to pieces. It looked as 
though some drunken giant had driven his 
giant plough over the land. In the midst of an 
utterly indescribable medley of torn wire, bro- 
ken wagons, and upheaved timbers, yawned 
here and there chasms like the craters of small 
volcanoes, where mines had been exploded. It 
was an ashen gray world, distorted with the 
spasms of death — like a scene in the moon. 
Except for the broken guns, the scattered 
clothing, the hasty graves, the dead horses and 



RICHARD NORTON'S MOTOR CORPS 123 

other signs of human passage, no one could 
have believed that such a place had ever been 
anything but dead and desolate. The rubbish 
still remained when I was there, but masses of 
material had been already gathered up and 
saved. 

Mr. Norton gave the text of the notice issued 
to the army on October 1, describing the vast 
quantities of material captured in this battle, 
and added this evidence that six years before 
the present war began the Germans had decided 
to use gas in warfare: 

In this notice no mention is made of some 
very interesting gas machines that were taken. 
They were of two sorts, one for the production 
of gas, the other to counteract its effects. The 
latter were rather elaborate and heavy but very 
effective instruments consisting of two main 
parts; one to slip over the head, protecting the 
eyes and clipping the nose, the other an arrange- 
ment of bags and bottles containing oxygen, 
which the wearer inhaled through a tube held 
in the mouth. There were several forms of 
these apparatuses, but the most interesting 
point to note about them is that one had 
stamped upon it the words: "Type of 1914 — 
developed from type of 1912, developed from 
type of 1908," thus showing that seven years 
ago the Germans had decided to fight with gas. 



124 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

Eight months later Norton and his corps 
were at Verdun, the scene of the great but un- 
successful offensive of the army of the Crown 
Prince of Germany in the spring of that year, 
1916. Another letter from him to his brother 
Eliot, reprinted in "Harvard Volunteers in 
Europe" from the Springfield Republican of 
July 8, 1916, shows the perils of the work in 
which he and his men were then engaged, and 
the spirit in which they faced these perils. The 
letter was dated Verdun, June 15, 1916: 



It is some time since I wrote, but we first 
were moving up here, and since arriving have 
had strenuous times. We are camped some 
five miles outside Verdun, where we have our 
permanent post; another is at a hospital be- 
tween us and Verdun; while every night, as 
soon as it is dark, we send out eight cars to 
evacuate the advanced posts. This is extremely 
risky work and can only be done at night, 
owing to the road being in view of the Germans, 
who are not a kilometre distant. At night I 
have my office, as it were, at Verdun, where 
L'hoste has his main post. Thence, as there is 
need, he and I go up and down the line of posts 
to keep the work moving. 

The advanced posts can be reached only at 
night, so, as there are only four hours of dark- 



RICHARD NORTON'S MOTOR CORPS 125 

ness, we are extremely busy. Two days ago 
we were ordered to evacuate one of these posts 
by day — a thing heretofore unheard of. Of 
course, I obeyed and sent the five cars de- 
manded, following them up a short time after- 
ward. I arrived at the starting point to find 
the first car had been steadily shelled as it went 
along the road, that the second, containing 
Jack Wendell and a chauffeur named Hollinshed, 
had not returned from the trip, and that another 
car had gone to see what the trouble was. 

I started at once to go after the missing 
cars, but at that moment Hoskier, who had 
gone after Wendell, came hurrying round the 
corner. He told me that both Wendell and 
Hollinshed had been wounded, but not seri- 
ously, as they were putting some wounded in 
their car; that they were being cared for at the 
poste' that they begged me not to come up till 
dark; that the authorities at the poste begged 
us to keep away for fear the poste would be 
shelled, and, lastly, he said it was obvious the 
Boches were laying for us, for they were shell- 
ing our road steadily. 

This was obviously the right thing to do, 
but Lawrence MacCreery at once asked to be 
allowed to go by the boyau with his chauffeur; 
they would reach the poste as dark fell and 
would bring Wendell and Hollinshed out on 
their car if that had not been destroyed. This 
they very pluckily did. I, meanwhile, had to 
report to the authorities, and got back just as 
Wendell and Hollinshed had been fixed up by 



126 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

the doctors. Wendell has a slight wound in 
the back, Hollinshed a rather more severe one 
in the shoulder. They behaved in a way to 
give cause to their families to be extremely 
proud of them, absolutely refusing to return 
with Hoskier, but insisting on his taking the 
four bad cases they had gone to get. They will 
both be given the Croix de Guerre, and they 
well deserve it. 

Since then we have had one car blown to 
pieces and five others hit. Our Verdun post is 
shelled every evening, and one of the others was 
heavily peppered last night. The division has 
suffered heavily, and I do not think can stay 
more than a few days more. We can't either, 
if we go on losing men and cars at this rate. 

Till to-day it has rained steadily, which has 
added to our difficulties. However, we are 
sticking to it and I think will pull off the work 
all right. 

The officials of the French Army showed a 
high appreciation of the value of Mr. Norton's 
services. Early in the war he received the 
Croix de Guerre, the Journal Officiel, in the 
announcement signed by General Petain, the 
commander of the 2d Army, referring to his 
services as follows: 

He gave proof of the greatest devotion and 
finest courage, by himself driving his cars day 



RICHARD NORTON'S MOTOR CORPS 127 

and night, through dangerous zones and by- 
giving to all his section an example of endur- 
ance carried to the point of complete exhaus- 
tion of his strength. 

After the work of Mr. Norton's corps at Ver- 
dun was completed, the members as a body 
were cited in the army orders of the day for 
their bravery and devotion in caring for the 
wounded. "II n'est plus un seul de ses mem- 
bres," concluded the citation, "qui ne soit un 
modele de sang-froid et d'abnegation. Plusieurs 
d'entre eux ont ete blesses." Finally in the 
spring of 1917 the Cross of the Legion of Honor, 
the highest decoration to be won in France by 
a foreigner, was presented to Mr. Norton. 

When the United States entered the war Mr. 
Norton had charge of more than a hundred am- 
bulances on the western battle-front, and was 
arranging for two additional sections of forty 
men each. He was urged to accept a commis- 
sion as major in the United States Army and 
to continue in control of the ambulance corps 
which he had created and which he had man- 
aged with untiring devotion and with admira- 
ble results for two and a half years. He de- 



128 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

clined the offer, however, and in September, 
1917, retired from the service. Early in Au- 
gust, 1918, he died suddenly in Paris of menin- 
gitis. 



XIV 
THE WORK OF MR. ANDREW'S CORPS 

ENTIRELY distinct from the Motor-Ambu- 
lance Corps, of which Richard Norton was 
the chief, was the Field Service of the American 
Ambulance, of which A. Piatt Andrew was the 
Inspector-General. Mr. Andrew was one of the 
contingent of American volunteers who arrived 
in Paris early in 1915. He was a man of ex- 
perience and culture. After being graduated 
at Princeton in 1893 he had studied in Ger- 
many and in Paris, and from 1900 to 1909 he 
was an instructor and assistant professor of 
economics at Harvard. For the two following 
years he was Assistant Secretary of the United 
States Treasury. 

To the energy and administrative skill of Mr. 
Andrew were mainly due the organization and 
development of the Field Service of the Ameri- 
can Ambulance in France, the full story of 
which, told in detail by the men themselves 
who formed the corps, is to be found in "Friends 

129 



130 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

of France." In recognition of his services to 
France, Mr. Andrew, early in 1917, received the 
Cross of the Legion of Honor, he and Mr. Nor- 
ton being the only two Americans engaged in 
ambulance work upon whom this distinction 
had been conferred up to that time. 

By the spring of 1915 a sufficient number of 
cars and drivers had been assembled in Paris 
to justify the request that the French authori- 
ties give the American Ambulance a place at 
the front. The request was complied with, and 
by the end of April three sections, each compris- 
ing about twenty American cars, and all with 
American volunteer drivers, were in operation, 
one stationed at Dunkirk, another in Lorraine 
and a third in the Vosges. 

From these small beginnings the Field Ser- 
vice of the American Ambulance developed 
rapidly, until nearly two years later, in Janu- 
ary, 1917, only a short time before the United 
States entered the war, Mr. Andrew, summariz- 
ing the work done, could write as follows to the 
Princeton Alumni Weekly: 

We have already more than 200 cars driven 
by American volunteers, mostly university men, 



THE WORK OF MR. ANDREW'S CORPS 131 

grouped in sections which are attached to divi- 
sions of the French army. These sections have 
served at the front in Flanders, on the Somme, 
on the Aisne, in Champagne, at Verdun (five 
sections, including 120 cars at the height of the 
battle), in Lorraine and in reconquered Alsace, 
and one of our veteran sections has received the 
signal tribute from the French army staff of 
being attached to the French Army of the 
Orient in the Balkans. We are now on the 
point of enlarging our service for the last lap 
of the war, and a considerable number of new 
places are available. 

Every American has reason to be proud of 
the chapter which these few hundred American 
youths have written into the history of this 
prodigious period. Each of the several sections 
of the American Ambulance Field Service as a 
whole and fifty-four of their individual members 
have been decorated by the French army with 
the Croix de Guerre or the Medaille Militaire 
for valor in the performance of their work. 

It was obvious that young college men formed 
the most available class for this service, which 
called for leisure and certain financial resources, 
in addition to initiative and intelligence. A 
knowledge of the mechanics of a motor-car and 
the ability to speak French were of course addi- 
tional and valuable assets. Mr. Norton even 
considered it essential that his men should 



132 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

know some French. In a letter to the secretary 
and treasurer of his corps in London, Mr. 
H. D. Morrison, he wrote: 

Many of the writers whose letters I have 
sent you express a delightful confidence that 
they can learn enough of the vernacular on 
their voyage out to render their service effec- 
tive. It is a shame to dash cold water on such 
pleasing beliefs, but the fact is they are hope- 
lessly wrong. They are like the man who, 
when asked if he played the violin, replied "I 
don't know; I have never tried." Still the gen- 
eral spirit of the letters is fine. 

The young college men of the country made 
a splendid response to Mr. Andrew's appeals. 
As given in the list at the end of " Friends 
of France," the members of the American Am- 
bulance who had been in the Field Service down 
to October, 1916, numbered 349. Of this num- 
ber 264 men were representatives of forty -eight 
American universities, colleges and schools, and 
of two foreign universities, Paris and Cam- 
bridge. Of these 264 men there were 89 from 
Harvard, 31 from Princeton, 30 from Yale, 11 
from Dartmouth, 8 from the University of 
Pennsylvania, 7 from Columbia, 6 from the 



THE WORK OF MR. ANDREW'S CORPS 133 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 5 from 
Amherst, and from 1 to 4 from dozens of other 
institutions, from the University of California 
in the West to Bowdoin in the East. Eighteen 
of these men were American Rhodes Scholars 
from Oxford. The non-college men in the 
group, eighty-five in number, were, almost 
without an exception, of the same high spirit 
and of the same fine type as their fellows. 

The duties which all the men in the Field 
Service of the American Ambulance were re- 
quired to perform involved hardships, depriva- 
tions, and often great dangers. Three of them 
were killed in service — Richard N. Hall, of Ann 
Arbor, Mich., Henry M. Suckley, of Rhine- 
beck, N. Y., and Edward J. Kelley, of Phila- 
delphia. Many of them were wounded, two so 
severely and under such circumstances as to 
win for them the most coveted decoration that 
the French Army has to bestow, the Medaille 
Militaire, which carried with it the Croix de 
Guerre avec Palme. They were William M. 
Barber, of Toledo, Ohio, and Roswell S. San- 
ders, of Newburyport, Mass. 



XV 

THE DEATH OF RICHARD HALL 

THE first section of the American ambu- 
lance to reach the front in April, 1915, 
had its headquarters at the beginning at the 
town of Saint-Maurice, on the headwaters of 
the Moselle, about fifteen miles north of Bel- 
fort, near the Swiss frontier. At first number- 
ing only ten ambulances, the section was soon 
increased to twenty, when it was found that the 
light but strong American cars could replace the 
mules and farm-wagons which up to that time 
had been used to transport the wounded over the 
mountain roads, with their heavy grades, from 
the dressing-stations behind the firing-lines to 
the hospitals. Later the headquarters of the 
section were moved nearer the firing-lines to 
Moosch, in the valley of the river Thur, which, 
flowing in a southeasterly direction, emptied 
into the Rhine. From the mountain heights 
the front-line French trenches overlooked the 

134 



THE DEATH OF RICHARD HALL 135 

broad Rhine valley to the east, Mulhausen and 
Colmar being within full view. The ten miles 
or so between Saint-Maurice and the valley of 
the Thur included the watershed between the 
Moselle and the Rhine and the boundary-line 
between France and Germany. 

One of the most popular men in this Alsace 
section was Richard N. Hall, of Ann Arbor, 
Michigan. Immediately after being graduated 
at Dartmouth in June, 1915, Hall had gone to 
France and had joined the American Ambulance 
Field Service, becoming a member of the third 
section in Alsace. Under the title "Christmas 
Eve, 1915," Waldo Peirce, of Bangor, Maine, 
in "Friends of France," described the circum- 
stances under which Hall met his death, and 
indicated the affection in which he was held by 
his mates: 

All this time, as in all the past months, 
Richard Nelville Hall calmly drove his car up 
the winding, shell-swept artery of the mountain 
of war, — past crazed mules, broken-down artil- 
lery carts, swearing drivers, stricken horses, 
wounded stragglers still able to hobble, — past 
long convoys of Boche prisoners, silent, de- 
scending in twos, guarded by a handful of men, — 



136 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

past all the personnel of war, great and small 
(for there is but one road, one road on which to 
travel, one road for the enemy to shell), — past 
abris, bomb-proofs, subterranean huts, to arrive 
at the postes de secours, where silent men moved 
mysteriously in the mist under the great trees, 
where the cars were loaded with an ever-ready 
supply of still more quiet figures (though some 
made sounds), mere bundles in blankets. 

Hall saw to it that those quiet bundles were 
carefully and rapidly installed, — right side up, 
for instance, — for it is dark and the brancardiers 
are dull folks, deadened by the dead they carry; 
then rolled down into the valley below, where 
little towns bear stolidly their daily burden of 
shells wantonly thrown from somewhere in 
Bocheland over the mountain to somewhere in 
France — the bleeding bodies in the car a mere 
corpuscle in the full crimson stream, the ever- 
rolling tide from the trenches to the hospital, 
of the blood of life and the blood of death. 

Once there, his wounded unloaded, Dick 
Hall filled his gasolene tank and calmly rolled 
again on his way. Two of his comrades had 
been wounded the day before, but Dick Hall 
never faltered. He slept where and when he 
could, in his car, at the poste, on the floor of our 
temporary kitchen at Moosch — dry blankets — 
wet blankets — blankets of mud — blankets of 
blood; contagion was pedantry — microbes a 
myth. 

At midnight Christmas Eve, he left the val- 
ley to get his load of wounded for the last time. 




Richard Hall. 



THE DEATH OF RICHARD HALL 137 

Alone, ahead of him, two hours of lonely driv- 
ing up the mountain. Perhaps he was thinking 
of other Christmas Eves, perhaps of his distant 
home, and of those who were thinking of him. 

Matter, the next American to pass, found 
him by the roadside halfway up the mountain. 
His face was calm and his hands still in posi- 
tion to grasp the wheel. Matter, and Jennings, 
who came a little later, bore him tenderly back 
in Matter's car to Moosch, where his brother, 
Louis Hall, learned what had happened. 

A shell had struck his car and killed him 
instantly, painlessly. A chance shell in a thou- 
sand had struck him at his post, in the morn- 
ing of his youth. 

The body of Richard Hall was buried with 
all the honors of war in the valley of Saint- 
Amarin, his grave being next to that of a 
French officer who fell the same morning. At 
the end of the service Hall's citation was read 
and the Croix de Guerre was pinned to his 
coffin. A translation of the latter half of the 
address of the surgeon-in-chief of the 66th 
Division, Dr. Georges, follows: 

Barely graduated from Dartmouth College, 
in the noble enthusiasms of his youth he brought 
to France the invaluable cooperation of his 



138 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

charitable heart — coming hither to gather up 
on the battlefields of Alsace those of our gallant 
troops who were wounded fighting for their 
beloved country. 

He died like a " Chevalier de la Bienfaisance," 
like an American, while engaged in a work of 
kindness and Christian charity ! 

To the dear ones whom he has left in his 
own land, in Michigan, to his grief-stricken 
parents, to his older brother who displays here 
among us such stoicism in his grief, our respect 
and our expressions of sorrow are most sincere 
and heartfelt. 

Driver Richard Hall, you are to be laid to 
rest here, in the shadow of the tri-colored flag, 
beside all these brave fellows, whose gallantry 
you have emulated. You are justly entitled to 
make one of their consecrated battalion ! Your 
body alone, gloriously mutilated, disappears; 
your soul has ascended to God; your memory 
remains in our hearts — imperishable ! — French- 
men do not forget ! 

Driver Richard Hall — farewell ! 



XVI 

AROUND BOIS-LE-PRETRE, THE "FOREST OF 
DEATH" 

PONT-A-MOUSSON, which became the 
headquarters for ten months of Section 2 
of the Field Service of the American Ambulance, 
is near the Lorraine border, at the apex of a tri- 
angle at the base of which are Nancy and Toul. 
It is on the Moselle River, and lies only a dozen 
or so miles east of Seicheprey, where the Ameri- 
can soldiers first came in conflict with the Ger- 
mans. The section consisted of twenty cars, 
and the Americans in charge of them numbered 
twenty-four, under the leadership of Edward 
Van D., or, as he was more commonly called, 
Ned, Salisbury, of Chicago. Constant and vio- 
lent fighting in the near-by region in and around 
Bois-le-Pretre, the "Forest of Death," the Ger- 
mans called it, kept the section busy during the 
summer of 1915, Pont-a-Mousson and the 
neighboring towns and villages being frequently 

139 



140 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

under shell-fire. The section began its work 
in April, at first under the direction of French 
orderlies. The Americans, however, were so 
quick to learn, and adapted themselves to their 
new duties so readily, that in a short time the 
French section was transferred to another post 
and the Americans were left in sole charge of 
the work. 

Two of the members of this section have left 
a full record of its personnel and of its daily 
activities — James R. McConnell, of Carthage, 
North Carolina, and Leslie Buswell, of Glouces- 
ter, Massachusetts. McConnell's narrative was 
printed in the Outlook for September, 1915, with 
an introduction by Colonel Roosevelt; and the 
paper was so full of information and was written 
with such vividness, freshness and humor, that 
it deserved all the praise it received. The article 
was reprinted in "Friends of France." Here 
is McConnell's picture of the scene when the 
shelling was active: 

It was a day when the shelling seemed to be 
general, for shrapnel and small 77 shells were 
also bursting at intervals over and in a little 
town one passes through in order to avoid a 



AROUND THE "FOREST OF DEATH" 141 

more heavily bombarded outer route on the 
way to the postes de secours. It was magnifi- 
cent descending the hill from the postes that 
afternoon. To the left French 75 shells were 
in rapid action; and one could see the explosion 
of the German shells just over the crest of the 
long ridge where the batteries were firing. It 
was a clear, sparkling day, and against the 
vivid green of the hills, across the winding 
river, the little white puffs of shrapnel explod- 
ing over the road below were in perfect relief, 
while from the red- tiled roofs of the town, 
nestling in the valley below, tall columns of 
black smoke spurted up where the large shells 
struck. Little groups of soldiers, the color of 
whose uniforms added greatly to the picture, 
were crowded against the low stone walls lining 
the road to observe the firing; and one sensed 
the action and felt the real excitement of the 
sort of war one imagines instead of the uninter- 
esting horror of the cave-dweller combats that 
are the rule in this war. 

In contrast with the foregoing is McConnell's 
description of the night-work of the American 
ambulance drivers: 

The work at night is quite eerie, and on 
moonless nights quite difficult. No lights are 
allowed, and the inky black way ahead seems 
packed with a discordant jumble of sounds as 
the never-ending artillery and ravitaillement 



142 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

trains rattle along. One creeps past convoy 
after convoy, past sentinels who cry, "Hake la ! " 
and then whisper an apologetic "Passez" when 
they make out the ambulance; and it is only 
in the dazzling light of the illuminating rockets 
that shoot into the air and sink slowly over the 
trenches that one can see to proceed with any 
speed. 

It is at night, too, that our hardest work 
comes, for that is usually the time when attacks 
and counter-attacks are made and great num- 
bers of men are wounded. Sometimes all 
twenty of the Section cars will be in service. 
It is then that one sees the most frightfully 
wounded: the men with legs and arms shot 
away, mangled faces, and hideous body wounds. 
It is a time when men die in the ambulances 
before they reach the hospitals, and I believe 
nearly every driver in the Section has had at 
least one distressing experience of that sort. 

Through all the excitement, however, these 
young Americans preserved their characteristic 
traits. Thus McConnell notes: 

No matter how long the war lasts, I do not 
believe that the members of Section Y will lose 
any of their native ways, attitudes, or tastes. 
They will remain just as American as ever. 
Why, they still fight for a can of American 
tobacco or a box of cigarettes that comes from 
the States, when such a rare and appreciated 



AROUND THE "FOREST OF DEATH" 143 

article does turn up, and papers and magazines 
from home are sure to go the rounds, finding 
themselves at length in the hands of English- 
reading soldiers in the trenches. I never could 
understand the intense grip that the game of 
baseball seems to possess, but it holds to some 
members of the Section with a cruel pertinacity. 
One very dark night, a few days ago, two of us 
were waiting at an advanced poste de secours. 
The rifle and artillery fire was constant, illu- 
minating rockets shot into the air, and now 
and then one could distinguish the heavy dull 
roar of a mine or torpille detonating in the 
trenches. War in all its engrossing detail was 
very close. Suddenly my friend turned to me 
and, with a sigh, remarked, "Gee! I wish I 
knew how the Red Sox were making out !" 

Thursday, the 22d of July, 1915, was a mem- 
orable day for the Americans in Pont-a-Mous- 
son. The town was heavily shelled, and it was 
only by the narrowest margin that some of 
them were not killed. As it was, they lost their 
faithful orderly and general servant, Mignot, 
to whom they were all greatly attached. 

A graphic narrative of the occurrences of that 
day is to be found in one of the letters that 
make up the book called "Ambulance No. 10," 
by Leslie Buswell, of Gloucester, Massachusetts, 



144 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

a member of the section. Under date of Pont-a- 
Mousson, July 24, 1915, Buswell wrote: 

. . . We got back to lunch about 12 o'clock, 
and Mignot, our indefatigable friend in the 
position of a general servant, upbraided us for 
our unpunctuality, etc. 

We had hardly finished lunch when a shell 
burst some twenty metres away and we hur- 
riedly took to the cellar, while eleven more 
shells exploded all around our headquarters, 
or "caserne," as we call it. We then went for 
a round of inspection and found that the twelve 
shells had all fallen on our side of the road and 
were all within forty or fifty metres of us. 
This made us feel pretty sure that the shells 
were meant for us or for our motors. Schroder* 
and I discussed the matter, and came to the 
conclusion that we did not like the situation 
very much, and that if the Germans sent per- 
haps six shells, all at once, we should many of 
us get caught. I was very tired, and at about 
one-thirty went to sleep and slept until five- 
thirty, when I went to dinner at the caserne. 

The evening meal over, an argument started 
about the merits of a periodical called Le Mot 
(do you know it?) — a kind of futurist paper. 
After a rapid-fire commentary from one and 
then another of us, which continued until 
about eight-thirty, Schroder and I decided to 
go to our rooms to bed. We were walking 

* Bernard N. P. Schroder, the only representative in the American 
Ambulance Field Service of Northwestern University. 



AROUND THE "FOREST OF DEATH" 145 

home when I reminded him that he had been 
asked to tell four of our fellows who slept in a 
house near by to be sure that no light could be 
seen through the shutters; so turning back we 
rapped on the window and heard merry laugh- 
ter and were greeted with a cheery invitation 
to join the nine who had gathered inside. It 
seems that one of them, who had been on duty 
at Montauville, had managed to get some fresh 
bread and butter and jam, and they were cele- 
brating the event ! We had to decline their 
friendly hospitality, however, as we wanted to 
get some sleep. 

I had just got my boots off when — whish-sk- 
sh-bang! bang! bang! bang! — four huge shells 
burst a little way down the road towards our 
caserne. Thirty seconds after came two more 
— five minutes later six more — and then we 
heard a screaming woman ejaculating hysteri- 
cally "C'est les Americains." Schroder and I 
looked at each other without speaking. We 
hurriedly dressed and started to run to the 
caserne — women and soldiers shouting to us to 
stay where we were; but rushing on through 
the fog, smoke and dust, we reached head- 
quarters. There we found the rest of the Sec- 
tion in the cellar, and hurriedly going over those 
present, realized that two were absent — Mignot 
and the mechanic of the French officer attached 
to us. 

Mignot, it was found, had been killed by one 
of the shells; also two women, while several 



146 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

others, including the mechanic, were badly- 
wounded. The narrative continues: 

Ogilvie* got his car and we got our stretchers 
out to take away the blesses. There were a 
few of us grouped about some seven or eight 
— and near — with the wounded just put on 
stretchers, when — "Look out!" Bang I Bang! 
Bang ! — three more shells. 

We had already thrown ourselves on the 
ground, and then, finding we were still alive, 
feverishly loaded the car. "Good God! I've 
stalled it," said the driver — then the cranking — 
would it never start — try again — thank Heaven, 
it was off ! Hardly thirty seconds after, whish- 
sh-bang I bang ! two more came. We retired to 
a cellar for a few minutes, as the three dead 
could stay there while it was so terribly dan- 
gerous. At last we emerged and were about 
to lift Mignot's body when both arms moved. 
Was he alive, after all ? No, it was only the 
electric wires he was lying on that had stimu- 
lated his muscles. The car turned the corner 
with the three dead, and we ran back to the 
caserne. 

There we found the rest of our Section very 
shaken indeed. A shell had burst just outside 
of the house where the nine were making merry 
and the violence of the impact had hurled all 
of them to the ground. Two feet nearer and 
the whole lot would have been killed. 

* Francis D. Ogilvie, of Lind6eld, Sussex, England. 



AROUND THE "FOREST OF DEATH" 147 

As a result of this bombardment and of an 
attack by the Germans on the town, the head- 
quarters of Section 2 were moved the next day 
to Dieulouard, five or six miles to the south of 
Pont-a-Mousson. 



XVII 
IN THE GREAT BATTLE FOR VERDUN 

WHEN in February, 1916, the German army 
of the Crown Prince began its attack 
upon the French troops protecting Verdun, the 
men composing Section 2 of the American Am- 
bulance were hastily transferred from the neigh- 
borhood of Pont-a-Mousson to Verdun. In the 
previous month Section 3 had been moved from 
its station in Alsace to the Lorraine front, and 
the men of this section were also at Verdun. 
The need of more ambulances finally became so 
great that two additional American sections 
were sent to the neighborhood of Verdun. 

Frank Hoyt Gailor, of Memphis, Tennessee, 
a member of Section 2, contributed to the 
Cornhill Magazine for July, 1916, a vivid de- 
scription of the journey of the section to a vil- 
lage near Verdun, by way of Bar-le-Duc. From 
this paper as it appears in full in "Friends of 
France," a few paragraphs may be quoted: 

We started from Bar-le-Duc about noon [on 
February 22, 1916], and it took us six hours 

148 



IN THE GREAT BATTLE FOR VERDUN 149 

to make forty miles through roads covered with 
snow, swarming with troops, and all but blocked 
by convoys of food carts and sections of trucks. 
Of course, we knew that there was an attack in 
the neighborhood of Verdun, but we did not 
know who was making it or how it was going. 
Then about four o'clock in the short winter 
twilight we passed two or three regiments of 
French colonial troops on the march with all 
their field equipment. I knew who and what 
they were by the curious Eastern smell that I 
had always before associated with camels and 
circuses. They were lined up on each side of 
the road around their soup kitchens, which were 
smoking busily, and I had a good look at them 
as we drove along. 

It was the first time I had seen an African 
army in the field, and though they had had a 
long march, they were cheerful and in high 
spirits at the prospect of battle. They were all 
young, active men, and of all colors and com- 
plexions, from blue-eyed blonds to shiny blacks. 
They all wore khaki and brown shrapnel casques 
bearing the trumpet insignia of the French 
sharpshooter. We were greeted with laughter 
and chaff, for the most part, in an unknown 
chatter, but now and again some one would 
say, "Hee, hee, Ambulance Americaine," or 
"Yes, Ingliish, good-bye." . . . 

At about six in the evening we reached our 
destination some forty miles northeast of Bar- 
le-Duc. The little village where we stopped 
had been a railroad centre until the day before, 



150 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

when the Germans started bombarding it. 
Now the town was evacuated, and the smoking 
station deserted. The place had ceased to 
exist, except for a hospital which was estab- 
lished on the southern edge of the town in a 
lovely old chateau, overlooking the Meuse. 
We were called up to the hospital as soon as 
we arrived to take such wounded as could be 
moved to the nearest available rail-head, which 
was ten miles away, on the main road, and four 
miles south of Verdun. We started out in con- 
voy, but with the then conditions of traffic, it 
was impossible to stick together, and it took 
some of us till five o'clock the next morning to 
make the trip. That was the beginning of the 
attack for us, and the work of "evacuating" the 
wounded to the railway stations went steadily 
on until March 15. It was left to the driver 
to decide how many trips it was physically pos- 
sible for him to make in each twenty-four 
hours. There were more wounded than could 
be carried, and no one could be certain of keep- 
ing any kind of schedule with the roads as they 
then were. 

Sometimes we spent five or six hours wait- 
ing at a cross-road, while columns of troops 
and their equipment filed steadily by. Some- 
times at night we could make a trip in two 
hours that had taken us ten in daylight. Some- 
times, too, we crawled slowly to a station only 
to find it deserted, shells falling, and the hospi- 
tal moved to some still more distant point of 
the line. Situations and conditions changed 



IN THE GREAT BATTLE FOR VERDUN 151 

from day to day — almost from hour to hour. 
One day it was sunshine and spring, with roads 
six inches deep in mud, no traffic, and nothing 
to remind one of war, except the wounded in 
the car and the distant roar of the guns, which 
sounded like a giant beating a carpet. The 
next day it was winter again, with mud turned 
to ice, the roads blocked with troops, and the 
Germans turning hell loose with their heavy 
guns. 



XVIII 

WILLIAM BARBER'S MEDAILLE MILITAIRE 

BEGINNING on February 21, 1916, the 
battle for Verdun, with the repeated Ger- 
man attacks and the French counter-attacks, 
lasted for weeks and even months. One of the 
most thrilling experiences of the American Am- 
bulance drivers was that of William Barber, of 
Toledo, Ohio, who was the only representative 
of Oberlin in the section which had come to 
Verdun from Alsace. The story begins with 
the following selections from the letter of a 
Harvard ambulance driver to his uncle, which 
was printed anonymously in the Red Cross 
Magazine for October, 1916. Accompanying 
the letter, which was in the form of a diary — 
vivid memoranda of incidents during six suc- 
cessive June nights — was an injunction "not to 
let dad know about this, for it would worry 
him." Here is the writer's description of one 
night's experience: 

Fourth Night : Filled up gas and oil and off 
again: headquarters changed into Verdun be- 

152 



BARBER'S MEDAILLE MILITAIRE 153 

cause of bombardment of suburb. Black as 
pitch and heavy rain. Heavy traffic of all 
kinds on road. Terrible driving. Heavy fir- 
ing; dead horses and smashed wagons, etc., 
strewed all along. O. K. to post. On way 
back met great tangle in road: six horses killed 
in one spot; dead and wounded men and busted 
wagons all mixed up in middle of road. Got 
out; was in act of cutting dead horses' traces 
with knife; "bang" without warning and another 
in the same spot. Thrown down among the 
tangle; face in a pool of horses' gore; showered 
with rocks and stuff of every kind. Sharp pain 
in shoulder. Thought had got one; turned out 
to be only a bruise. Another man in back of 
me same; more wounded, groaning all around; 
don't know how many dead; could not hear 
for two hours, and still have ringing in my 
ears. Saw there was nothing to do but wait 
until firing was over. Ran back in ditch in 
side of road and got behind tree and big rock. 
More came, but I was O. K. . . . Let up for 
a minute; ran through debris to stop other cars 
coming in opposite direction. Met two just on 
other side; dove under car; shell went off pretty 
near. Some one jumped off car and followed 
me; it was Paul. We stayed there a couple of 
minutes and talked; will never forget it. 

He got back to headquarters safely, running 
at high speed, "low not working," with two 
shrapnel dents in his helmet and many scars 



154 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

on his car. The next night he rescued a 
wounded comrade, young Barber, as thus nar- 
rated : 

Fiftk Night— Got to post O. K. Heavy 
traffic; firing; road stinking of dead flesh. On 
way back heard forlorn cry of Barber. Stopped 
and found him in arms of Frenchman by side 
of road. Nerves gone so he couldn't talk 
straight. Car had been hit; he was wounded; 
pumping hell out of road ahead where his car 
was. He had crawled back; was afraid to let 
him wait. Dragged him into front alongside 
of me and made a dash; never drove so fast in 
all my life. Passed his car; whole back shot 
off and wheels gone. Got to last bridge and 
found artillery coming across in opposite direc- 
tion. Crawled across one side on remains of a 
^railroad track. Grabbed leading horses of a 
'battery by bridle, and jammed them over on 
'one side of road, commanding riders to wait; 
must have thought I was an officer; because 
they did; hurried back and drove across. Got 
to headquarters O. K. and got Barber into 
dressing room. Worst wound was on his back, 
but a glancing one. He will pull through. 

The sequel to this drama, which came so 
near having a tragic ending, is to be found in 
the following selections from a letter dated 
June 30, which Barber wrote from the hospital 



BARBER'S MfiDAILLE MILITAIRE 155 

to his family and which is printed entire in 
"Friends of France": 

Four nights ago I had a pretty narrow es- 
cape. I can mention no names here, but this 
is the gist of the story: — 

I was driving my car with three wounded 
soldiers in it along a road that was being shelled. 
Well, I got in the midst of a pretty hot shower, 
so I stopped my car and got under it. A few 
minutes later I supposed it was blowing over, 
so I got out. I had no sooner done so than I 
heard one of those big obus coming, the loudest 
I had ever heard. I ran to the front of my 
car, crouching down in front of the radiator. 
When it burst it struck the car. My three 
soldiers were killed. I was hurt only a little. 
I am not disfigured in any way. It just tore 
my side and legs a bit. 

The French treated me wonderfully. I suc- 
ceeded in getting the next American Ambu- 
lance driven by Wheeler (a great boy) who 

took me to the City of where our poste is. 

Here I was given first aid, and the Medecin chef 
personally conducted me in an American Am- 
bulance, in the middle of the night, to a very 
good hospital. They say I have the best doc- 
tor in France — in Paris. 

Well, I woke up the next day in a bed, and 
ha ye been recuperating ever since. Every one 
is wonderful to me. General Petain, second to 
Joffre, has stopped in to shake hands with me, 
and many are my congratulations, too, for above 



156 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

my bed hangs the Medaille Militaire, the greatest 
honor the French can give any one. Really, I 
am proud, although I don't deserve it any more 
than the rest. Please excuse my egotism. 

This letter identifies the rescuer of Barber as 
Walter H. Wheeler, of Yonkers, N. Y., who had 
been with Barber in Alsace before coming to 
Verdun. After he had turned Barber over to 
the medical men, Wheeler was sent back to get 
the wounded from Barber's car. But he found 
that the same shell that had wrecked the car 
and had injured Barber had killed the three 
wounded soldiers who were in the car. 

For their courageous work through these 
dreadful nights the entire section received an 
army citation and as a body the Croix de 
Guerre. Wheeler and three of his companions 
received individual citations and each the Croix 
de Guerre. The Medaille Militaire which was 
awarded to Barber carried with it the Croix de 
Guerre avec Palme. The only other driver in 
the American Ambulance Field Service upon 
whom the Medaille Militaire had been bestowed, 
up to November, 1916, was Roswell S. Sanders, 
of Newburyport, Mass. 



XIX 

TWO YALE MEN AT VERDUN 

AMONG the Americans who won distinction 
-L *• by their devotion to their difficult and 
dangerous duties as drivers of ambulances at 
Verdun were several Yale men, brief records of 
whom are available. Elmore McNeill Bost- 
wick, of St. Louis, having completed his year's 
work at college by Christmas, 1915, sailed for 
France, and with a classmate, George K. 
Haupt, of Buffalo, became an ambulance driver 
in what was called the "Formation Harjes," to 
which was awarded the Croix de Guerre for its 
services at Verdun. Here is a paragraph from 
a letter from Bostwick, which appeared in the 
Yale Alumni Weekly, describing his sensations 
during an enemy attack from the air: 

After breakfast, just before we started out, 
I was treated to my first air attack. Eight 
German aeroplanes came over the town and 
attempted to destroy the military headquarters. 
As we were right next door to them, it was 
rather disturbing. An air attack is the most 

157 



158 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

nerve racking thing in the world. You see 
these little things, looking for all the world like 
hornets, apparently exactly over your head. 
You hear a whistling sound, lie on the ground 
flat on your face and wait for the explosion 
which comes about three seconds after you first 
hear the bomb coming. I can tell you you do 
a lot of thinking in those three seconds, and 
each time you feel as though the bomb was 
going to hit you right in the small of the back. 
They dropped sixteen bombs that morning, 
but no one was hurt, though one dropped within 
fifty feet of where I was lying. 

This reference to the "Formation Harjes" 
calls for a word of explanation. The first lot of 
ambulances which the American Red Cross sent 
abroad consisted of seventeen Ford cars, the 
cost of which was met by contributions from 
students at Yale and Harvard, twelve being the 
gift of Yale and five of Harvard. Writing in 
the spring of 1916 of the work which these cars 
had accomplished, Mr. H. Herman Harjes, 
president of the American Relief Clearing 
House in Paris and the official representative 
for France of the American Red Cross, said: 

The original American Red Cross ambulance 
unit is doing very good and satisfactory work 



TWO YALE MEN AT VERDUN 159 

in every respect. It has transported up to 
date about 16,000 wounded. All the men are 
very devoted and full of energy, and the service 
they are rendering is much appreciated. 

The French authorities having expressed a 
desire that the general control of all the Ameri- 
can ambulances and drivers be placed in the 
hands of the American Red Cross, the arrange- 
ment was made, the cars remaining, of course," 
under the immediate direction of the French 
army officers for service at the front. Mr. 
Harjes, in the same letter to the American Red 
Cross, explained the transfer under this arrange- 
ment, of Mr. Norton's Motor Ambulance Corps, 
as follows: 

A unit known as the "American Volunteer 
Motor Ambulance Corps," having Mr. Richard 
Norton at its head, has now come under the 
American Red Cross. His section was, up to 
quite recently, under the British Red Cross, 
and has been doing excellent work. . . . AH 
the volunteer American work in the field has 
been really splendidly done and is extremely 
appreciated by everybody. 

The following paragraph from a letter from 
W. P. Clyde, Jr., of the Yale class of 1901, 



160 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

which also appeared in the Yale Alumni Weekly, 
gives a glimpse of the spirit which these Ameri- 
can volunteers brought to their arduous and 
often perilous work: 

Under these conditions your eyes smart 
and your throat becomes dry from dust, the 
fumes and the strain. The air at night on 
roads near the front is heavy with the smell of 
burnt powder and also that other odor with 
which all Verdun reeks — of the dead hastily 
buried, or left as they died, or burned beneath 
the fallen walls and ruins. We carried wounded, 
we carried those gone mad from shell-shock, 
we carried the dying, even the dead. Among 
the thousands of wounded in our cars were 
some Germans, and they received from us and 
in the French dressing stations and field hos- 
pitals the same care as the others. For the 
Allies do not hate the poor, half-starved, bullied, 
and driven German Yokels who now compose 
the bulk of the German soldiery. Even we 
whose work is a work of mercy have come to 
have the greatest hatred for the Heads of the 
Huns and all that Hundom stands for; besides 
helping the wounded it is a great satisfaction 
to every member of our corps to feel that, as 
perfectly good Americans, we are doing more 
than just "watching and waiting" by helping 
the Allies defeat for all time the attempt of 
the Hun to enslave the world. 



XX 

HENRY SUCKLEY KILLED BY A BOMB 

BY some odd decree of chance an unusual 
number of Harvard men found themselves 
in the Vosges section of the American Ambu- 
lance Field Service; and as one form of diver- 
sion it amused these young men to call them- 
selves the Harvard Club of Alsace Reconquise. 
The club came into being on the night before 
the Harvard-Yale football game in November, 
1915, and its official life seems to have ended 
when the health of the Harvard team was 
drunk after the result of the game was known. 

First and last there were twenty-five Har- 
vard men in the membership list of this "club." 
One of them was Henry M. Suckley, of the 
class of 1910. Hailing from Rhinebeck, N. Y., 
Suckley had joined the American Ambulance 
Field Service in February, 1915, and by good 
work had become an assistant to his classmate, 
Lovering Hill, when in July, 1915, Hill suc- 
ceeded Richard Lawrence as the commander of 

161 



162 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

Section 3. By his coolness and courage in carry- 
ing the wounded over the shell-swept roads in 
the Vosges he had won his Croix de Guerre, 
and he was destined to receive, on the eve of 
his death, even greater honors. 

In the autumn of 1916 he returned to the 
United States for the purpose of recruiting a 
new ambulance section. He succeeded in secur- 
ing from his friends in the New York Stock Ex- 
change sufficient funds to purchase and equip 
twenty motor-ambulances, and with these he 
returned to France. Meanwhile his old chief, 
Lovering Hill, had been sent at the head of 
Section 3 to Saloniki to serve with the French 
Army in the Orient, the section containing 
eleven Harvard men, three men from Yale and 
Princeton respectively, and one each from the 
universities of Pennsylvania and Virginia. 

The work of this section around Saloniki 
gave such satisfaction that General Sarrail 
asked for another; and the cars which Suckley 
had procured and which were unofficially known 
as the New York Stock Exchange Unit were 
formed into Section 10, and under his leader- 
ship were sent to Saloniki. 



HENRY SUCKLEY KILLED BY A BOMB 163 

In the following March [1917] Suckley was 
killed at a camp near Saloniki by the explosion 
of a bomb dropped by a German aviator. Two 
others were killed and several were wounded 
by the same bomb. Describing the occurrences 
following the explosion, which took place on the 
18th, Gordon Ware, a college mate of Suckley's, 
wrote in part as follows, his letter intended for 
private reading only, appearing in the Harvard 
Alumni Bulletin of May 24, 1917: 

W. cranked up his car and took Henry, 
smiling and smoking, to K. "If I'm going to 
pass out, I'll have a cigarette first," he said, the 
calmest of the lot. The lieutenant's chauffeur, 
who is the butt of every one, proved himself a 
real hero and refused aid and transportation 
until Henry had been attended to. At K. 
everything possible was done for him, but only 
his strong constitution enabled him to last the 
night, an artery having been severed. He suf- 
fered little and was always conscious, not realiz- 
ing until the end that he was going. Bright 
and cheerful, even the doctor broke down when 
he went. It gives an idea of the man's charm 
that he could so grip strangers, and it is difficult 
to measure our regard for him after three 
months' close association. As a section-leader 
he worked like a dog, and asked nothing of 
anyone which he would not do himself. The 



164 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

hardest thing is that he must go before the sec- 
tion can make or break itself. The Legion of 
Honor was wired him. 

Suckley was buried with all military honors. 
Shortly after, oddly enough, the same German 
airship which had dropped the bomb that killed 
Suckley was forced by fire or by engine trouble 
to descend on the same French camp that had 
been bombarded, the two Germans surrendering. 
The air-ship was capsized in landing and burned. 
Of the two occupants, Mr. Ware wrote: 

The men were white and frightened, uncer- 
tain as to their reception. As their French was 
not good they could hardly have been re-assured 
by a lieutenant's threat to shoot them — empha- 
sizing the point with drawn revolver — should 
their denial that there were bombs in the ma- 
chine prove false. The officer was a good-look- 
ing young chap with a keen, American-like 
face. His non-com. was of the caricatured 
Prussian type, bull-necked, bullet-headed and 
brutal in appearance. The officer had three 
decorations, including the inevitable Iron Cross. 
" Le moteur est — est — en panne" he said hesitat- 
ingly, and claimed that it had been going 
badly all the morning and at length, catching 
fire, had forced his descent, accidentally unsuc- 
cessful. I think he deliberately capsized it so 
as to destroy it. 



XXI 

A PRINCETON MAN'S EXPERIENCES 

WHEN the war broke out Clarence V. S. 
Mitchell, of New York, was in the Har- 
vard Law School, having been graduated from 
Princeton, in 1913, and from St. Paul's School, 
Concord, four years earlier. He sailed for Eng- 
land on the Olympic in September, 1914, to join 
the American Ambulance service in France. 
From the letters that he sent to his parents, his 
father, Clarence Blair Mitchell, has compiled a 
small volume which he has had privately printed 
under the title, "With a Military Ambulance 
in France, 1914-15." A large part of the value 
of this intimate personal record lies in the fresh- 
ness and spontaneity of these letters, informal 
in character and, of necessity, unstudied in 
form. 

Young Mitchell was exceptionally equipped 
for his job, for he spoke French fluently and 
preserved his American sense of humor as a 
means of counterbalancing the tragic sadness of 

165 



166 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

many of the scenes and incidents of his daily- 
life. Finding on reaching London that he must 
be inoculated against typhoid, he notes: 

I saw Dr. D after lunch and he put 

500,000,000 more typhoid germs into me for 
the sum of one guinea, which is not very much 
per germ, but seems quite a bit for the labor 
involved. 

While waiting for his ambulance Mitchell 
became an orderly in Dr. Blake's hospital at 
Neuilly. One of his adventures in a Paris sub- 
way-station is thus described: 

I was sitting next to a woman with a small 
baby. All of a sudden she let out a yelp, threw 
the kid to me and ran to the other end of the 
platform, where she fell on the neck of a sol- 
dier. I did not know if I was to become an 
adopted father or not, but I could not drop the 
kid and sat there very much fussed, trying to 
amuse it. By evil luck a crowd ot ouvrieres 
came along and burst into shrieks of laughter. 
Their remarks were considerably more witty than 
polite ! By the time the mother came back I 
was the centre of an amused crowd. Now, if 
I see any babies around, I don't sit down ! 

By November Mitchell got his ambulance, a 
big six-cylindered Packard, and was assigned 



A PRINCETON MAN'S EXPERIENCES 167 

to a section of the Formation Harjes, with 
headquarters at the Chateau d'Ayencourt, near 
Montdidier, under the immediate leadership of 
Paul Rainey, the big-game hunter, who became 
his roommate. Four of the party were Prince- 
ton men, two of whom were doctors. Their 
principal work was the transportation of 
wounded soldiers from the railway-station to 
the military hospital of Val de Grace. Mitchell 
brought a serene philosophy to bear upon his 
job. "This ought to be a very healthy life," 
he notes; "no end of work, and no rum or late 
hours." He did not escape altogether, how- 
ever. For early in 1915 he wrote that while he 
was convalescent from an attack of jaundice, a 

Mrs. H substituted jonquils for the roses 

which she found in his room, in order to make 
the color scheme in harmony with his com- 
plexion ! 

Not infrequently Mitchell was near the fir- 
ing-line. Under a November (1914) date he 
wrote: 

Thursday Night — I am writing this on a 
board laid on my steering wheel while I'm 
waiting outside the station for orders. I'm 



168 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

stuck here till 12 p. m. It's a damp, foggy 
night, but the sight of the few lights gives a 
rather Whistler-like touch, and the cannons 
are booming at short intervals. They worked 
us for fair this p. m. I made any number of 
trips to a farm behind the firing line and to 
Wassy and Dannescourt, two villages, and 
brought in 40 wounded. Our cars brought 
in over 200. Off on another trip now, so so- 
long. 

Back again from a trip to the civil hospital 
with a couple of wounded. This p. m. on my 
last trip to Wassy when it was almost dark I 
passed a battalion of artillery. They were 
coming over a ridge with the full moon rising 
behind them, and it was a most gorgeous sil- 
houette. I also saw the Germans shelling aero- 
planes. You'd hear a boom and then see a 
puff of brown smoke burst way up high, but 
they hit nothing. I didn't get nearer than two 
miles from our line, but every little bit helps. 
Our machines are the envy and admiration of 
every French doctor who sees them. They 
carry 6 couches, and the stretchers run in on 
pulleys, which is a new idea to these people. 

There are 1,400 wounded in this station — 
the result of having taken the village of Oncy 
and having it retaken by the Germans this 
morning. The French intend making another 
attack to-night, so to-morrow ought to be a 
busy day. An old fellow rode in beside me to- 
day who had been in Algiers four years and we 



A PRINCETON MAN'S EXPERIENCES 169 

had a great talk. He was shot lying down, the 
bullet going in above his shoulder and stopping 
just above his knee. He was also hit by a 
spent bullet on his Morocco medal, which 
pleased him no end, — and he was very gay. The 
station beggars description — stretchers every- 
where and smells and groans rising in chorus. 
I've just been through giving them chocolate 
and cigarettes and doing any little thing I 
could, like taking letters, etc. They seem very 
grateful, and I enjoy doing it no end. 

It is safe to say that it was Mitchell's custom 
to bring something besides newspapers with 
him on his return from trips to Paris, if one 
may judge from his reception at the hospital 
on one occasion: 

I have been a good deal in Ward 3, bringing 
the men papers, etc., and the evening I came 
back from Paris I went in to see them and was 
quite pleased to have them let out yells of de- 
light. In fact they yelled so loud that the doc- 
tors and three nurses came running in to see if 
a lamp had upset, and I felt rather foolish, 
though it was nice to be welcomed back. 

Perhaps the most effective page in Mitchell's 
letters is the one in which he gives a picture, 
full of color and ending in a dramatic climax, of 



170 AMERICAN AMBULANCES IN FRANCE 

a midnight mass which he and a few of his com- 
panions attended on Christmas Eve in 1914 in 
Montdidier : 

We sat around in the smoking-room till 

11.30 p. m., when I took Dr. B , Miss L , 

Miss L , T and myself into midnight 

mass at St. Pierre. I think it was the most 
impressive service I've ever attended, and only 
those who have seen the chapel at St. Paul's 
on "Last Night" can begin to picture it. The 
church is an old fourteenth century one, with 
fair vaulting and very massive columns and a 
good organ with an echo high up at the end of 
the centre aisle. 

The place was jammed, and I stood with 
my aviator friends near the back. It must 
have been a picturesque sight from the altar. 
The chairs crowded with women and then the 
aviators, some in the new light-blue uniforms, 
others in bearskin coats; then two of us in gray- 
green alongside and the dark splash of the two 
nurses' cloaks standing out against the red of 
the soldiers' trousers as they stood behind us in 
a crowd ten deep the whole width of the church. 
The lights on the columns and vaulting were 
beautiful, and when the organ came in to 
accompany the priest's chanting it seemed 
almost as if someone were picking the notes 
out of the moss-grown cracks in the arched 
roof. War seemed a long way off, but when 
the bells rang midnight and everything was as 



A PRINCETON MAN'S EXPERIENCES 171 

silent as possible, you could hear sobbing all 
around; and as the last few strokes tolled, three 
"Err-roums!" from the 120s at La Boissiere 
came as clear as could be, and you woke with 
a start. 



PART V 

RELIEF WORK IN BELGIUM AND IN 
NORTHERN FRANCE 



XXII 

HERBERT HOOVER AND "ENGINEERING 
EFFICIENCY " 

BEFORE 1915 the name of Herbert Hoover 
was unknown in the United States save 
to a few mining engineers and financial men 
interested in mining ventures, and save also to 
the home circle in the little village of West 
Branch, Iowa, where he was born in 1874. 
Educated as a mining engineer at Leland Stan- 
ford University, where he was graduated in 
1895, he passed his apprenticeship days in the 
service of the United States Geological Survey 
in Arkansas and in the Sierra Nevada Moun- 
tains, then became an assistant manager of 
mines in New Mexico and California, and finally 
acquired a large and varied experience in man- 
aging mines in West Australia and as chief 
engineer to the Chinese Bureau of Mines, 
finally reaching London in 1902. This was 
quick work — to go from college to a partner- 
ship in a great London mining house in seven 

175 



176 RELIEF WORK IN BELGIUM 

years; but Hoover, as the whole world has since 
come to know, was an exceptional man. He 
has written a chapter in the history of the 
Great War which will be read with the deepest 
interest for hundreds of years to come. 

It is no part of the task of the present writer 
to describe in detail the work of the Commis- 
sion for Relief in Belgium which Mr. Hoover 
organized and directed. The full story may be 
read in Professor Vernon Kellogg's "Fighting 
Starvation in Belgium," and in his "Headquar- 
ters Nights." Originally a pacifist and a hu- 
manitarian by conviction, Mr. Kellogg left 
Stanford University, where he was Professor 
of Entomology when the war started, and went 
abroad to do what he could to help relieve 
human suffering. He soon joined his friend of 
many years, Herbert Hoover, in the Commission 
for Relief in Belgium, and, except for a brief 
period when he was obliged to resume his uni- 
versity duties, he remained with the "C. R. B.," 
as it was called, until the Americans left Bel- 
gium. After being graduated in 1889 at the 
university of his native State of Kansas and 
after having studied at Cornell, Professor Kel- 



"ENGINEERING EFFICIENCY" 177 

logg passed several years in further study in 
Leipsic and in Paris. His consequent com- 
mand of the German tongue made him espe- 
cially valuable as the representative of the 
commission at the German headquarters in 
Belgium, and, when necessary, at the Great 
Headquarters of the General Staff of the Ger- 
man Army. 

Only the briefest survey can be made here of 
the problems that the commission had to solve 
and of the means that were adopted to solve 
them. First, however, it may be advanta- 
geous to quote a paragraph from an address 
which Mr. Hoover delivered before the New 
York Chamber of Commerce in February, 1917, 
for the light that it throws upon the motives 
of the American volunteers who gave their ser- 
vices to this great cause: 

The rights or * wrongs of neither of these 
fierce contentions are for me to discuss. It is 
enough for an American that here, ground be- 
tween millstones, are millions of helpless people 
whom America, and America alone, could save. 
Not only was it our duty, but it was our privi- 
lege. It was our privilege to forfend infinite 
suffering from these millions of people, to save 



178 RELIEF WORK IN BELGIUM 

millions of lives, and it was our opportunity to 
demonstrate America's ability to do it in a 
large, generous and efficient way, befitting our 
country; but far beyond this, it was our oppor- 
tunity to demonstrate that great strain of 
humanity and idealism which built up and in 
every essential crisis saved our Republic. We 
could throw a gleam of sunshine into the swel- 
tering dungeon into which Europe has been 
plunged. 

The three tenets of the organization were: 
first, volunteer service; second, high ideals, and 
third, decentralization. The difficulties involved 
in the problems of the purchase, transporta- 
tion and distribution of huge food-supplies to 
the nine and a half million hungry people of 
Belgium and northern France are thus outlined 
by Professor Kellogg in his "Fighting Starva- 
tion in Belgium": 

Rice from Rangoon, corn from Argentina, 
beans from Manchuria, wheat and meat and 
fats from America; and all, with the other 
things of the regular programme, such as sugar, 
condensed milk, coffee and cocoa, salt, salad 
oil, yeast, dried fish, etc., in great quantities, to 
be brought across wide oceans, through the 
dangerous mine-strewn Channel, and landed 
safely and regularly in Rotterdam, to be there 




- a 

% ! 

-. c 



"ENGINEERING EFFICIENCY" 179 

speedily transferred from ocean vessels into 
canal boats and urged on into Belgium and 
northern France, and from these taken again 
by railroad cars and horse-drawn carts to the 
communal warehouses and soup kitchens; and 
always and ever, through all the months, to 
get there in time — these were the buying and 
transporting problems of the Commission. One 
hundred thousand tons a month of food-stuffs 
from the world over, in great shiploads to Rot- 
terdam; one hundred thousand tons a month 
thence in ever more and more divided quanti- 
ties to the province and district storehouses, to 
the regional storehouses and mills, to the com- 
munal centres, and finally to the mouths of the 
people. And all to be done economically, 
speedily, and regularly; to be done, that is, with 
" engineering efficiency." 

As all of these vast supplies of food were 
procured, controlled and distributed by the 
neutral American members of the commission, 
the people of Belgium not unnaturally looked 
upon them as the gift of the American people or 
of the American Government. As a matter of 
fact, the financial help which America gave the 
commission was so comparatively insignificant 
as almost to be negligible. Their own govern- 
ments were incurring heavy debts in order to 
feed the people of Belgium and northern France. 



180 RELIEF WORK IN BELGIUM 

Up to June 1, 1917, the commission had received 
from all sources $297,000,000 to carry on this 
work— $89,500,000 from the British Govern- 
ment and $66,000,000 from the French Gov- 
ernment in the form of loans to the Belgian 
Government for relief work in Belgium; $108,- 
000,000 from the French Government for relief 
work in the German-occupied provinces of 
northern France; $17,000,000 and $11,500,000 
respectively as charity from private sources in 
Great Britain and in the United States; and 
finally $5,000,000 in profits in its commercial 
transactions, which were transferred to the 
commission's benevolent account. In June, 
1917, the United States Government undertook 
to finance the work of the commission in the 
form of periodic loans to the French and Bel- 
gian Governments. 



XXIII 

AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS IN FIELD SERVICE 

AT first Mr. Hoover turned naturally for 
•*■ ** executive assistants in his work to his 
American friends and associates in the engineer- 
ing profession in London, Brussels and other 
near-by centres. He did not, however, confine 
himself to men of any one class. In time he 
secured the services, in Professor Kellogg's 
words, of "half a dozen college professors, a 
lawyer of large practice, two clergymen of prac- 
tical turn of mind, a well-known explorer and 
sportsman, a dietetic expert, an architect of 
high repute, a magazine editor, a famous for- 
ester, a stock broker, a consul, an expert in 
children's diseases; altogether a wholesome va- 
riety!" Professor Kellogg himself was one of 
this group, several of whom also worked with 
the younger men as provincial delegates. The 
list of the American volunteers, mostly young 
men, who came in more or less direct contact 
with the Belgian and French people in this 

181 



182 RELIEF WORK IN BELGIUM 

relief work, successive resident directors, assis- 
tant directors, head delegates and assistants, 
numbers in all hardly a hundred and fifty, no 
more than forty of whom were ever on duty at 
one time in both Belgium and northern France. 
Of these men, "representatives of an Ameri- 
can type," Professor Kellogg, who as director at 
Brussels knew them well, says, in his "Fighting 
Starvation in Belgium": 

They came from forty-five different Ameri- 
can colleges and universities; more from Har- 
vard than any other one. Twenty of them 
had been selected by their colleges and their 
States to be Rhodes Scholars in Oxford Univer- 
sity. These twenty had been thus already 
selected on a basis of scholarship, youthful 
energy, general capacity, and good-fellowship. 
They had not, however, been selected on a 
basis of experience in business or — least of all 
— relief work. And the rest of the one hundred 
and fifty were selected by us on about the same 
general grounds, adding the more special one 
of a usable, or buddingly usable, knowledge of 
the French language. Several could read Ger- 
man, a few speak it. That was also useful. 
But the Commission asked primarily for in- 
telligence, character, youthful vigor, and en- 
thusiasm, rather than specific attainments or 
experience. 



AMERICANS IN FIELD SERVICE 183 

In his "Journal from Our Legation in Bel- 
gium," Hugh Gibson, the First Secretary of /the 
Legation, under date of December 20, 1914, has 
this to say of these young volunteers: 

The first group of Americans to work on the 
relief came into Belgium this month. They 
are, for the most part, Rhodes scholars who 
were at Oxford and responded instantly to 
Hoover's appeal. They are a picked crew, and 
have gone into the work with enthusiasm. 
And it takes a lot of enthusiasm to get through 
the sort of pioneer work they have to do. 
They have none of the thrill of the fellows who 
have gone into the flying corps or the ambu- 
lance service. They have ahead of them a 
long winter of motoring about the country in 
all sorts of weather, wrangling with millers and 
stevedores, checking cargoes and costs, keeping 
the peace between the Belgians and the Ger- 
man authorities, observing the rules of the 
game toward everybody concerned, and above 
all keeping neutral. It is no small undertaking 
for a lot of youngsters hardly out of college, 
but so far they have done splendidly. 

Of the work that these young Americans did 
Professor Kellogg speaks in the highest terms: 

Its members have crossed the channel in con- 
voyed English despatch boats, passed through 
closed frontiers, scurried about in swift motors 



184- RELIEF WORK IN BELGIUM 

over all the occupied territory in which few 
other cars than German military ones ever 
moved, visited villages at the front under shell 
fire, lived at the very Great Headquarters of all 
the German armies of the West, been trusted 
on their honor to do a thousand and one things 
and be in a thousand and one places prohibited 
to all other civilians, and have lived up to the 
trust. They have suffered from the mistakes 
of uninformed or stupid soldiers, and spent 
nights in jail; they have taken chances under 
bombing airmen, and been falsely but danger- 
ously accused as spies; but despite obstacles 
and delays and danger they have carried the 
little triangular red-lettered white C. R. B. 
flag to every town and hamlet in the imprisoned 
land, and have gulped and passed on wet-eyed 
as the people by the roads uncovered to the 
little flag, with all its significance of material 
and spiritual encouragement. Under this flag 
they have been protector and protected at 
once. 

The conditions in the German-occupied por- 
tions of northern France differed greatly, of 
course, from those in Belgium, but the conduct 
of the Americans was equally to their credit. 
On this point Professor Kellogg says: 

It is gratifying to be able to say that in the 
whole history of the stay of the Commission's 
men in northern France, during which at least 



AMERICANS IN FIELD SERVICE 185 

thirty different men were used, no single com- 
plaint of dishonorable or unneutral conduct on 
their part was made by the German military 
authorities. Some of the escort officers occa- 
sionally had complaints to make of the imma- 
turity of some of the Americans, or of their 
manner, not sufficiently stiff or precise properly 
to impress other German officers dining with 
them, and one complained rather bitterly — I 
remember, to my amazement — that his Ameri- 
can persisted in wearing a ragged overcoat ! 
But despite the strain of sympathy and anger 
imposed on them by being compelled to see 
the sufferings of the helpless French under the 
rigors of military control, and, too often, mili- 
tary brutality, our men held their strong feel- 
ings in check. They were not only bound in 
honor, but they knew that their mission could 
be accomplished only by the maintenance of a 
correct behavior; they could help the imprisoned 
people much more by limiting themselves to 
the all-important work of the ravitaillement than 
by giving way to any temptation, however 
strong, of unneutral acts or speech. 



XXIV 

AMERICAN IDEALISM AND HUMOR 

PROFESSOR KELLOGG observes that most 
of the young Americans in Belgian relief 
work were fortunate in having two things that 
were of the greatest value to them: "a support- 
ing idealism and a saving sense of humor." 
In illustration of the unexpected revelation in a 
single German of this latter trait, he tells, in 
his "Fighting Starvation in Belgium," a story 
of Edward D. Curtis, of Chestnut Hill, Boston. 
Curtis, a graduate of Harvard, was at Cam- 
bridge University, England, when the war be- 
gan. He immediately joined Mr. Hoover's 
London committee to help stranded Americans 
get home, and followed his chief to Belgium, 
remaining in the service of the commission until 
the end, in April, 1917. Of him Professor Kel- 
logg says: 

Curtis, the first of our Brussels-Holland 
couriers, had to have these qualities to stand 
his seventeen arrests by German sentries, and 

186 



AMERICAN IDEALISM AND HUMOR 187 

Warren* his three days in a military prison at 
Antwerp,, and yet keep unconcernedly on with 
their work. Curtis's sense of humor was for- 
tunately well matched by a German's — a single 
German's — when the young American, a little 
annoyed by an unusual number of stoppings on 
the road one day, handed his pass to the tenth 
man who demanded it, with a swift, highly un- 
complimentary personal allusion to his tor- 
mentor, in pure Americanese. The sentry 
handed it back with a dry, "Much obliged, the 
same to you." He was probably a formerly-of- 
Chicago reservist who knew the argot. 

A Yale man, Scott Hurtt Paradise, a Rhodes 
scholar at Oxford, experienced a similar surprise 
once which he described in the Yale Alumni 
Weekly : 

It is only fair to say that in Belgium one 
hears much less about atrocities than one does 
in the United States or England. The old 
Landsturmers, with their dingy uniforms, their 
long beards and their gentle eyes, seem sadly 
out of place guarding the railroad tracks in the 
cold rainy nights. One of them once remarked 
to us, to our great astonishment, as he read our 
passes, "Haven't you any English or American 
newspapers? I'm so damned lonely I don't 
know what to do," and this in perfect Yankee. 

* Robert H. Warren, an American Rhodes scholar at Oxford, who died 
at Bordeaux in November, 1916. 



188 RELIEF WORK IN BELGIUM 

In the same communication Paradise called 
attention to the curious coincidence that Horace 
Fletcher, the apostle of mastication, should 
have been in Brussels when the colossal problem 
of feeding the whole Belgian people was being 
solved : 

In fact, Horace Fletcher, the great advocate 
of mastication, a merry, rosy, little old gentle- 
man comfortably ensconced in Brussels, attrib- 
utes the unusually good health which prevails 
in Belgium this winter [1914-15] to the neces- 
sity for sleeping much, eating little and chew- 
ing that little very much, and is quite jubilant 
over this conclusive vindication of his theories. 

In the list at the end of Professor Kellogg's 
book Mr. Fletcher is recorded as having been 
in the service of the commission from February 
to November, 1915. 

Incessantly harassed and annoyed as they 
were by the number and variety of regulations 
which the Germans imposed upon them, the 
Americans kept their tempers and even man- 
aged to see the humorous side of some of the 
situations. Thus, according to Professor Kel- 
logg, the delegate at Liege, being in a facetious 



AMERICAN IDEALISM AND HUMOR 189 

mood, is said to have written his confrere at 
Namur as follows: 

Dear Delegate: 

I started three canal boats last week for 
Namur. I thought it safer to send three in 
order that one should finally reach you. The 
"Attends Je Viens" has already been stopped — 
the towing horse had no passport. I hear that 
the "Marchons Toujour s" is also not likely to 
get through, as the skipper's wife has given birth 
to a baby en voyage whose photo is, naturally, 
not on the passport. Betting is strong, how- 
ever, on the "Laisse-moi Tranquille." Be sure 
to take up the bottom planks when she arrives, 
as I understand Rotterdam thinks she may be 
carrying contraband. 

At first the Germans were utterly unable to 
understand the humanitarian idealism which 
had prompted the Americans to undertake so 
huge a task as the feeding of the destitute Bel- 
gians. Professor Kellogg narrates this incident 
in illustration of their sceptical attitude: 

In an interview Mr. Hoover had with one 
of the most important officers of von Bissing's 
staff, this official broke off the general discussion 
to say abruptly: 

"Now, we are all just human here, and I 
want to ask you, as man to man, one question: 



190 RELIEF WORK IN BELGIUM 

What do you Americans get out of this busi- 
ness ? Why are you doing it ? " 

"I tried to explain first with evenness of 
temper and then more emphatically," writes 
Mr. Hoover in his memorandum of the con- 
versation, "that the whole thing was simply a 
humane effort; and that not only did none of 
us get anything out of it, but that most of us 
lost something by it. But I found it too diffi- 
cult to be emphatic enough about this to make 
any real impression on him." 

Educated for years in a school which taught 
that in time of war any act however treacherous 
or dishonorable was justifiable, if it was com- 
mitted in the interest of the State, the Germans 
were utterly unable to believe that the Ameri- 
can delegates would not act as spies or as car- 
riers of contraband, if the opportunity pre- 
sented itself. This characteristically Teutonic 
attitude of mind was met by a frank honesty 
that was baffling though by no means convinc- 
ing. Thus Hugh Gibson, in speaking in his 
"Journal" of Edward Curtis in his relations 
with the Germans, says: 

He exudes silence and discretion, but does 
not miss any fun or any chance to advance the 
general cause. Of course it is taking the Ger- 



AMERICAN IDEALISM AND HUMOR 191 

mans some time to learn his system. He is ab- 
solutely square with them, and gets a certain 
amount of fun out of their determined efforts 
to find some sort of contraband on him. They 
can hardly conceive of his being honest, and 
think his seeming frankness is merely an un- 
usually clever dodge to cover up his transgres- 
sions. 



XXV 

NARRATIVES OF PRINCETON MEN 

FROM the start Princeton men took a promi- 
nent part in the work of the Commission 
for Relief in Belgium, and the narratives of 
their experiences and observations will be ma- 
terial of interest to the historian of the future. 
Early in 1916 the Princeton Alumni Weekly 
printed a lively account, received through Dean 
Howard McClenahan, who had been in Belgium, 
of some of the experiences of three young Prince- 
ton graduates who had been engaged in the 
field-work of the commission. They were Gil- 
christ B. Stockton, 1914, William H. Tuck, 
1912, and Richard R. Lytle, Jr., 1913, Lytle 
and Stockton having been among the Rhodes 
scholars at Oxford who dropped their work in 
response to Mr. Hoover's call for American 
volunteers. Selections from this communica- 
tion follow: 

Stockton was Ed. Curtis's successor as 
courier. That means he raced back and forth 

192 



NARRATIVES OF PRINCETON MEN 193 

from Brussels to Bergen-op-Zoom carrying the 
mail and confidential messages. His "G. G. 
pass" was an extraordinary monstrosity con- 
ceived and executed by the Germans, and worn 
in a celluloid case about his neck. The exact 
dimensions of the "G. G. pass" I do not know, 
but it looked about a yard square. It bore his 
photograph in a soft shirt and was signed per- 
sonally by Governor-General von Bissing. One 
adventure of Stockton's which I remember was 
his finding a German soldier, on the Putte 
frontier, who came from Jacksonville, Fla., [Mr. 
Stockton's home] and he spoke the same kind 
of English that Stockton speaks. From the 
position of Mercury to the Commission he was 
promoted to the Antwerp staff, where I was his 
chief. 

The day he arrived I sent him out to take 
the inventory of all of the regional warehouses 
and mills in the province. Stockton can speak 
almost no French, but by the sign language 
and by use of certain well conned phrases he 
managed to bring in a perfect report by eve- 
ning. He evolved a system of questionnaires, 
and very methodically and easily kept track of 
the communes in his charge. His brief describ- 
ing the method for using these questionnaires 
went to all the provincial delegates in Belgium 
as a model for their work. 

After two months' service in Antwerp — 
from August 1st to the last week in September 
[1915] — he was transferred to St. Quentin in the 
North of France, where his daily life is carefully 



194 RELIEF WORK IN BELGIUM 

supervised by a German official whom we call 
a nurse, and where his professional life is closely 
looked after by a whole staff of army people. 
He works there with a French committee in- 
stead of with Belgians, but every conversation, 
every telegram, every letter and every note 
book is carefully censored. 

Tuck had just arrived a short time before I 
left. Everyone was very much impressed with 
his maturity and his familiarity with the French 
language. He was sent to Mons in the province 
of Hainault to take charge of that large and 
important province, and we all feel sure that he 
will make good. 

Before Tuck was sent to Mons, however, 
he was "rushed" by about every province in 
Belgium. It was really amusing to see how we 
fell over each other in our frantic attempts to 
get Tuck, and how like a freshman being rushed 
for a college fraternity he proved to be. 

Lytle plunged headlong into the work of the 
Commission in the province of Luxemburg. 
Immediately after the veteran delegate Welling- 
ton had gone back to Oxford he had a hard 
time. Worst of all he got finally into an auto- 
mobile accident, in which his car smashed a 
car belonging to the Kreischef of one of the 
principal regions of Luxemburg. Lytle's letter 
to the Governor of the province of Luxemburg 
was not calculated to smooth the feelings of the 
Governor, and the Governor wrote back stating 
that Mr. Lytle's letter and his bearing at the 
time of the examination and detention were 



NARRATIVES OF PRINCETON MEN 195 

such that he, the Governor, felt called upon to 
"proceed against him for insult" — unless Lytle 
personally apologize. Lytle preferred to leave 
the country and so the matter rested. 

For three months, from January until the 
end of March, 1917, another Princeton man, 
Arthur Bartlett Maurice, formerly editor of 
The Bookman , was in the service of the com- 
mission in Belgium and northern France. Mr. 
Maurice contributed to several issues of the 
Princeton Alumni Weekly , in the following May 
and June, a detailed narrative of his experiences 
and those of the men with whom he was asso- 
ciated during this period. This paragraph de- 
scribes how he and his companions were housed 
in Brussels: 

Some of the men of the C. R. B. stayed in 
pensions. But most of us lived in houses which 
had been placed at the disposal of the Commis- 
sion by the owners for the double motive of 
appreciation of the work that was being done 
and in order to keep them from being occupied 
by the "Bodies." It was at No. 126 Avenue 
Louise, a broad thoroughfare lined by some of 
the city's finest residences and running from 
the circle of Boulevards to the Bois de la 
Cambre, that I went to live. The owner of the 



196 RELIEF WORK IN BELGIUM 

house had been lucky enough to cross into 
France before the occupation and was living in 
Paris. In the house, which had been left in 
charge of two servants, eight of us,* Leach, 
Maverick, Wickes, Kittredge, Arrowsmith, Cur- 
tis, Sperry and I, had some sort of headquar- 
ters. It was seldom that more than four or 
five appeared at the breakfast table. Maverick 
was a North of France man. Wickes spent the 
greater part of the week in Namur. Sperry 
usually had an engagement elsewhere. But no 
matter what the number present, here was no 
chance to complain of the monotony of exist- 
ence. "The life of an American delegate is a 
hard life," Maverick one day said whimsically. 
"Here we are forced to live in a place quite as 
humble as the average house that you see on 
Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park. I am 
reduced to the humiliation of riding about in an 
Overland car with a chauffeur only in half 
livery. To-night I shall probably be obliged 
to dine at the Taverne Royale." But in a way 
Maverick's flippancy was designed to cheer us 
up. When the words were spoken the ther- 
mometer at the side of the mantelpiece regis- 
tered 8° above zero Fahrenheit. It was the 
bitterest winter in recent history and coal was 
not to be had. 

* Dr. Charles N. Leach, of San Francisco; Robert V. Maverick, of 
San Antonio, Tex.; Francis C. Wickes, of Rochester, N. Y.; Tracy B. 
Kittredge, of Berkeley, Cal.; Robert Arrowsmith, of Orange, N. J.; 
Edward D. Curtis, of Chestnut Hill, Boston, and William H. Sperry, of 
Redwood City, Cal. Of this group of eight, seven were college men, 
there being two representatives of Princeton and one each of Stanford, 
. California, Williams, Columbia, and Harvard. 



NARRATIVES OF PRINCETON MEN 197 

Of the daily life of the delegates Mr. Maurice 
wrote: 

In Belgium last winter there were about 
thirty men, who were C. R. B. delegates in the 
strict sense of the term. A delegate gave his 
services. His transportation from the United 
States to Belgium was provided, and he was 
allowed a certain daily sum to cover the actual 
expenses of habitation and food. First among 
the delegates were the director, Warren Greg- 
ory, and the assistant director, Prentiss Gray. 
Both Californians. I am not going to tell what 
I think of them, because it would sound like 
fulsome flattery of Mr. Hoover, who selected 
them. Under their direction the delegates were 
assigned and shifted. There were the North of 
France men. A North of France man was 
sent to Lille, or Saint-Quentin, or Valenciennes, 
or Charleville, or Longwy. Day and night he 
was in the company of a German officer. The 
two had desks in the same office and occupied 
adjoining bedrooms. Somehow or other the 
officer always got the best desk and the best 
bedroom. They breakfasted, lunched, dined 
together. They sat side by side in the back 
seat of the motor car. If the officer wished to 
hold nightly revel in some cafe, he had to per- 
suade the delegate to accompany him. The 
American was supposed to hold no communica 
tion with any unit of the civil population save 
in the presence of his officer. It was a Siamese 
twins kind of existence. 



198 RELIEF WORK IN BELGIUM 

The German formula for the creation and 
maintenance of a great nation ruled from the 
top, "organization and obedience," could not, 
of course, be made to fit a democracy like 
America. How this German point of view was 
impressed upon the American delegates was 
illustrated by an incident which Mr. Maurice 
described : 

But there are certain memories which we all 
of us took away, no matter how slight and 
short-lived was the acquaintance. We recall, 
save in one or two cases, an artificial politeness, 
an attempt at bonhommie which hardly con- 
cealed the sneer. "What is German militarism? " 
I will tell you. "It is order, discipline, obedi- 
ence." That is always and ever the refrain. 
That covers all, explains all, justifies all. To 
them these virtues exist nowhere else in the 
world. We, in particular, are barbarians. 
There had been some slight infraction of one 
of the ninety and nine thousand rules that 
govern life in Belgium by a member of the 
C. R. B. and at the headquarters in the Place 
Roy ale Major B. was storming at Sperry of 
California. Sperry was not the offender, but 
as he was the passport man, official abuse usu- 
ally descended upon his head. But a sense of 
humor had Sperry, and he bore it all stoically. 
"You come from a country and a wild western 
state where you have no laws," so ran the in- 



NARRATIVES OF PRINCETON MEN 199 

dictment. "You don't understand what laws 
are or what they are made for. Don't you 
know there is a war?" "It seems to me," re- 
plied Sperry softly, "that I have heard of it." 
"Heard of it!" Major B. exploded. "I think 
we have heard of it. We have lost a million 
men." 

Mr. Maurice was in the first group of seven 
Americans connected with the commission who 
left Brussels on March 29, 1917; the other 
Americans followed a few days later. The 
roundabout journey from Brussels to Paris 
along the Rhine and through Switzerland con- 
sumed six nights and five days. 



XXVI 

EFFECT ON THE AMERICANS OF GERMAN 
METHODS 

ORIGINALLY, as we have seen, a pacifist, 
with humanitarian impulses, Professor 
Kellogg joined Mr. Hoover's forces in Belgium 
with an open, unprejudiced mind. His intimate 
contact with the Germans as the conquerors of 
Belgium, and his observations of their attitude 
of mind and of their methods as rulers, turned 
him from a pacifist into a would-be belligerent. 
Of the effect upon the active members of the 
commission as a whole who came in constant 
contact with the wheels and cogs, big and little, 
of the German war-machine, he says, in his 
"Headquarters Nights": 

The experience of our Relief Commission 
with this machine has been wearing. It has 
also been illuminating. For it has resulted in 
the conversion of an idealistic group of young 
Americans of open mind and fairly neutral 
original attitude into a band of convinced men, 
most of whom, since their forced retirement 

200 



EFFECT OF GERMAN METHODS 201 

from Belgium, have ranged themselves among 
four armies devoted to the annihilation of that 
machine and to the rescue and restoration of 
that one of the victims, the sight of whose 
mangling and suffering brought unshed tears 
to the eyes and silent curses to the lips of those 
Americans so often during the long two and a 
half years of the relief work. 

We were not haters of Germany when we 
went to Belgium. We have simply, by ines- 
capable sights and sounds and knowledge forced 
on us, been made into what we have become. 

The greatest single incident in bringing about 
this change of mind was the action of "the 
highest military authority" — not Von Bissing's 
Belgium government, Professor Kellogg says — 
in deporting something more than a hundred 
thousand able-bodied Belgian men to Ger- 
many. The world, he says, needs the whole 
story. He goes on: 

Unfortunately it cannot yet be written. 
Among other things lacking is the knowledge 
of just how many of the hundred thousand 
Belgian slaves have di^d or are to die in Ger- 
many. Some have been sent back hastily, so 
that they would not die in Germany; they die 
on the returning trains, or soon after they get 
back. Or, what is worse, some do not die, but 
continue to live, helpless physical wrecks. 



202 RELIEF WORK IN BELGIUM 

The deportations were not hazy to us. They 
were the most vivid, shocking, convincing sin- 
gle happening in all our enforced observation 
and experience of German disregard of human 
suffering and human rights in Belgium. . . . 

The deportations occurred near the end of 
the period of our stay in Belgium. They were 
the final and fully sufficient exhibit, prepared 
by the great German machine, to convince ab- 
solutely any one of us who might still have 
been clinging to his original desperately main- 
tained attitude of neutrality, that it was high 
time that we were somewhere else — on the 
other side of the trench-line, by preference. 



PART VI 
AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 



XXVII 

THE LAFAYETTE, OR AMERICAN, ESCADRILLE 

NO development of the Great War has pos- 
sessed for American youth the novelty, 
the picturesqueness, or the fascination of the 
air-ship service. It isn't many years ago that 
the feat of sailing an air-ship across the Channel 
from France to England, a distance of less than 
twenty-five miles, was hailed as an exploit of 
extraordinary skill and daring. At the present 
writing there are those who seriously advocate 
sending the fleet of huge American-built, Hand- 
ley Page bombing air-ships, with their spread of 
a hundred feet, to the battle front in France 
under their own power by a zigzag course to 
Newfoundland, the Azores, and Spain. The 
longest leg of this journey, from Newfoundland 
to the Azores, could be made by one of these 
ships, barring accidents, in about thirteen hours. 
Up to the outbreak of the war the monoplane 
and the biplane were regarded as wonderful toys 
of problematical commercial value. Even the 
Germans, to the diabolical ingenuity of whom 

205 



206 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

the development of the poison-gas bomb and the 
flame-throwers was due, seem to have had no idea 
of the prominent part which the heavier-than-air 
flying-machines were to play in the conduct of 
war. They had great hopes that the Zeppelins 
which they possessed would give them the mas- 
tery of the air for unrestricted bombing pur- 
poses, but these monsters proved to be too 
unwieldy and generally too untrustworthy for 
this purpose. The latest attempt of Zeppelins 
to bomb English cities, in August, 1918, was 
a complete fiasco. 

At first the air-ships were used by both the 
French and the Germans for observation pur- 
poses only. It is a legend of the service, which 
ought to be true even if it is not, that at the 
first meeting over the fighting lines of two 
French and German air-ships, the pilots greeted 
each other pleasantly. At the next meeting 
one — we may safely assume that it was the 
German ! — scowled and shook his fist at the 
other. At the third encounter one threw a 
bottle at his adversary, and at the next meet- 
ing fired a pistol. The transition to the quick- 
firing gun was then rapid. 



THE LAFAYETTE ESCADRILLE 207 

The air service appealed with especial force 
to the sporting instincts of the young Ameri- 
cans who were eager to help France in her dire 
extremity. Its chief fascination lay in the fact 
that it offered practically free play in a limitless 
medium to individual initiative, judgment, and 
skill. This was a form of warfare which har- 
monized perfectly with American traditions and 
with the American temperament. 

Any narrative of the exploits of American 
volunteer airmen in the Great War must begin 
with the formation of the Lafayette Escadrille. 
The full story of the organization, after months 
of ceaseless effort of this corps, was told by 
one of its two surviving members, Elliott C. 
Cowdin, in an article which he published in 
the Harvard Alumni Bulletin for March 7, 
1918. Gowdin gave the full credit for the 
formation of this flying corps and for its incor- 
poration in the French flying service to the 
energy and persistence of Norman Prince. He 
said: 

Norman Prince had spent many years and 
made many friends in France, and felt it his 
privilege and duty to serve her in the hour of 



208 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

her need. Prince arrived in Paris by way of 
England early in January, 1915. Knowing 
there were many Americans in the Foreign 
Legion and the various ambulance units, and 
being one of the pioneer aviators of the United 
States, he conceived the idea of forming an 
aero squadron, composed exclusively of Ameri- 
cans, to join the French Army. He consulted 
with his French friends, of whom Lieutenant 
Jacque de Lesseps was the most enthusiastic 
and was instrumental in getting the French 
War Department to listen to Prince's ideas and 
plans. He solicited the aid of several promi- 
nent Americans then residing in Paris, but they 
all declined to be identified in any way with the 
scheme, so that Prince had to fight his own 
battle, single-handed. The French Government 
told him they could not use his services, as avia- 
tion was so popular among the soldiers and so 
many were seeking to be admitted to this ser- 
vice that they had more aviators than they 
could use. 

This decision was finally reversed through the 
influence of M. de Sillac, who was connected 
with the Department of Foreign Affairs and to 
whom Prince had been introduced by John J. 
Chapman, the father of Victor Chapman. Of 
the original group of young American airmen 
who formed the Lafayette Escadrille, Cowdin 
wrote as follows: 



THE LAFAYETTE ESCADRILLE 209 

Early in May [1916] we were all mobilized 
at the Alsatian front as the "Lafayette Squad- 
ron" with French officers, Captain Thenault and 
Lieutenant de Laage, in command. The origi- 
nal members, besides those officers, were: Nor- 
man Prince, William Thaw, Victor Chapman 
and Kiffin Rockwell, of the Foreign Legion; 
James McConnell, who had already done good 
work in the American Ambulance before join- 
ing the French Aviation; Bert Hall and myself. 
Five of the original nine have been killed at the 
front. 

We remained but a short time in Alsace and 
were then transferred to the Verdun Sector, 
where we were joined by such men as Lufbery, 
Masson, Clyde Balsley (who was severely 
wounded the first week), Dudley Hill, Lawrence 
Rumsey and Chouteau Johnson. 

The Squadron has increased steadily, so that 
at the end of last year [1917] a total of 325 
men had joined it, counting those training in 
various schools. Of this number, some 25 have 
given their lives, several have been wounded, 
and several are prisoners. 

Norman Prince, Victor Chapman, Kiffin 
Rockwell, Jim McConnell and Lieutenant de 
Laage gave their lives gloriously for the great 
cause, and the only surviving member of the 
original squadron left at the front is William 
Thaw, now a Major with the American Force, 
still flying and doing great work for his country. 

Norman Prince fortunately lived long enough 
to see his long-cherished ideas successfully 



210 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

carried out and the Lafayette Squadron at the 
height of its success. 

The best collection of pen-portraits of these 
early members of the Lafayette, or, as it was as 
often called, the American, Escadrille and the 
most vivid and entertaining description of the 
life they led on the ground and in the air, are to 
be found in a paper which one of their number, 
James McConnell, contributed to the World's 
Work for November, 1916, and which was later 
incorporated in his book, "Flying for France." 
To McConnell and to those of his companions 
who for many long months had been trench- 
diggers in the Foreign Legion or drivers of 
ambulances, the transition to the choicest 
branch of the French military service was as 
startling as it was welcome. "For us all," says 
McConnell, "it contained unlimited possibilities 
for initiative and for service to France, and for 
them [Rockwell and Chapman] it must have 
meant, too, the restoration of personality lost 
during those months in the trenches with the 
Foreign Legion." 

As a good air-pilot was considered to be of as 
much value to the army as a battalion of troops, 



THE LAFAYETTE ESCADRILLE 211 

nothing was left undone to make the Americans 
comfortable and contented. McConnell is most 
amusing in his serene contemplation of the 
comparative luxury of his new surroundings. 
Met at the railway-station at Luxeuil, perhaps 
twenty miles northwest of Belfort, by a motor- 
car which took him to the aviation-field, he re- 
called, as he lolled back against the soft leather 
cushions, how in his apprenticeship days at 
Pau he had had to walk six miles for his laun- 
dry ! When he arrived at the headquarters of 
the escadrille his surprise was even greater: 

The equipment awaiting us at the field was 
even more impressive than our automobile. 
Everything was brand new, from the fifteen 
Fiat trucks to the office, magazine, and rest 
tents. And the men attached to the Esca- 
drille ! At first sight they seemed to outnum- 
ber the Nicaraguan army — mechanicians, chauf- 
feurs, armorers, motor cyclists, telephonists, 
wireless operators, Red Cross stretcher bearers, 
clerks ! Afterward I learned they totalled sev- 
enty-odd, and that all of them were glad to be 
connected with the American Escadrille. 

In their hangars stood our trim little Nieu- 
ports. I looked mine over with a new feeling 
of importance and gave orders to my mechani- 
cians for the mere satisfaction of being able to. 



212 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

To find oneself the sole proprietor of a fighting 
airplane is quite a treat, let me tell you. One 
gets accustomed to it, though, after one has 
used up two or three of them — at the French 
Government's expense. 

Rooms were assigned to us in a villa adjoin- 
ing the famous hot baths of Luxeuil, where 
Caesar's cohorts were wont to besport them- 
selves. We messed with our officers, Captain 
Thenault and Lieutenant de Laage de Mieux, 
at the best hotel in town. An automobile was 
always on hand to carry us to the field. I 
began to wonder whether I was a summer 
resorter instead of a soldier. 

When on his arrival McConnell's attention was 
called to eight little boxes on the table and he was 
informed that each contained a Croix de Guerre 
which was to be sent to the family of a man 
that had been killed on the last bombing expedi- 
tion, his surroundings acquired a different mean- 
ing, and he noted, with a touch of grim humor: 

I thought of the luxury we were enjoying: 
our comfortable beds, baths, and motor cars; 
and then I recalled the ancient custom of giving 
a man selected for the sacrifice a royal time of 
it before the appointed day. 

Of the seven members of the American Esca- 
drille who were together at Luxeuil, three — 



THE LAFAYETTE ESCADRILLE 213 

McConnell, Chapman, and Rockwell — were nov- 
ices in flying, just arrived from the assembly- 
station for aviators near Paris. The other four 
had had more or less experience with air-ships 
of various types. McConnell calls William 
Thaw, of Pittsburgh, the pioneer of them all, 
because he had been in the French flying service 
since early in 1915, and by the autumn of that 
year he was pilot of a Caudron biplane, doing 
good work as an observer. Meanwhile Norman 
Prince, of Boston, and Elliott Cowdin, of New 
York, who were the first Americans to enter the 
French aviation service, coming direct from the 
United States, had been at the front on Voisin 
air-ships with a "cannon" mounted in the bow. 
Finally Bert Hall, whose home was in Texas, 
had got himself transferred, according to Mc- 
Connell, from the Foreign Legion to aviation 
soon after Thaw did, and learning the art 
quickly, had been flying a Nieuport fighting 
machine. 

Of the men mentioned by Cowdin who joined 
the American Escadrille after its headquarters 
were shifted to the Verdun sector, Raoul Luf- 
bery, "American citizen and soldier, but dweller 



214 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

in the world at large," as McConnell calls him, 
hailed from Wallingford, Conn. Didier Masson 
had been a flier for exhibition purposes in the 
United States, Clyde Balsley was from El Paso, 
Dudley Hill from Peekskill, Lawrence Rumsey 
from Buffalo, and Chouteau Johnson from New 
York. All of the men of this group, except 
Lufbery and Masson, had been in the ambu- 
lance service, but in McConnell's expressive 
phrase, they were "tired of being non-comba- 
tant spectators.'* McConnell himself was born 
in Chicago, was educated at the University of 
Virginia, and was in business in Carthage, North 
Carolina, until January, 1915, when he sailed 
for France and entered the American Ambu- 
lance service. Chapman's home city was New 
York, and Kiffin Rockwell came from Atlanta, 
Georgia. 

The members of the American Escadrille were 
provided, to their great joy, with Nieuport air- 
ships, which meant that they were to form a 
fighting unit. The Nieuport was then the best 
type of fighting airplane the French possessed. 
It was a one-man air-ship, with a maximum 
speed of about 110 miles an hour and with a 



THE LAFAYETTE ESCADRILLE 215 

machine-gun mounted on its roof. The pilot 
fired the gun with one hand and controlled his 
ship with the other and with his feet. Each of 
the machines bore, as the distinguishing mark 
of the Escadrille, the head in profile of an 
American Indian; and on the side of the car 
of each was an individual identification mark, 
that on Hall's being the large letters BERT, 
and on MacConnell's the letters MAC. 

Flying in one of these Nieuports, while the 
squadron was still at Luxeuil, Rockwell brought 
down the Escadrille's first German airplane. 
McConnell described the combat as follows: 

He was flying alone when, over Thann, he 
came upon a German on reconnaissance. He 
dived and the German turned toward his own 
lines, opening fire from a long distance. Rock- 
well kept straight after him. Then, closing to 
within thirty yards, he pressed on the release 
of his machine gun, and saw the enemy gunner 
fall backward and the pilot crumble up side- 
ways in his seat. The 'plane flopped downward 
and crashed to earth just behind the German 
trenches. Swooping close to the ground, Rock- 
well saw its debris burning away brightly. He 
had turned the trick with but four shots and 
only one German bullet had struck his Nieu- 
port. An observation post telephoned the news 



216 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

before Rockwell's return, and he got a great 
welcome. All Luxeuil smiled upon him — par- 
ticularly the girls. But he couldn't stay to 
enjoy his popularity. The Escadrille was or- 
dered to the sector of Verdun. 



XXVIII 

THE FIRST AMERICAN AVIATOR TO FALL 

VICTOR CHAPMAN'S passion, as we have 
seen, was for color and scenery, with an 
admixture of danger. His flying papers admitted 
him, after ten wasted months in the Foreign 
Legion, into the French aviation service, and by 
the end of August, 1915, he was enjoying the 
scenery and a modicum of danger from a bomb- 
ing machine. Here is his description, from one 
of his letters, of the method of dropping a bomb 
from an air-ship: 

We must be nearing the spot, for the Lieu- 
tenant motioned me to load the projectile. 
This is by far the most difficult operation, for 
the 155 shell with its tin tail looking like a tor- 
pedo four feet long, is hung under the body and 
without seeing its nose even one has to reach 
down in front of the pilot, put the detonateur in, 
then the percuteur and screw it fast. After 
which I pulled off a safety device. You may 
imagine how I scrambled round in a fur coat 
and two pair of leather trousers and squeezed 
myself to get my arm down the hole. I really 

217 



218 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

had a moment's nervousness that the detonateur 
would not stay in the hole but fly back into the 
helice. However, all went well and the Lieu- 
tenant handed me the plan of the town of Dil- 
lingen where there were said to be huge casting 
works. Bad map it was and I got nothing out 
of the inaudible explanation and gestures. We 
were just passing over the river Saar by Pach- 
ten. Everything on the detail map was red. I 
still have scruples about dropping on dwelling 
houses — they might be Alsatians. Right under 
us was a great junction of railway lines, tracks 
and sidings. "That's a go," I thought, and 
pulled the handle when it came in the sighter. 
A slight sway and below me the blue-gray shell 
poised and dipped its head. Straight away and 
then it seemed to remain motionless. Pretty 
soon its tail began to wag in small circles and 
then I lost sight of it over some tree-tops. 
"Pshaw," I thought, "there it's going to fall on 
its side, and into a garden. Tant pis!" When 
all at once, in the middle of the railroad tracks 
a cloud of black smoke which looked big even 
from that height. The Lieutenant said after- 
wards that I rocked the whole ship when I saw 
where it had fallen ! 

Experience in a bombing plane filled Chap- 
man with a desire to qualify as a fighting pilot, 
and to join the squadron which his friends, 
Norman Prince and Elliott Cowdin, were try- 
ing to form. His letters for the next few 



FIRST AMERICAN AVIATOR TO FALL 219 

months gave in detail his experiences at the 
aviation school at Avord, where he was learning 
to fly. By the following April, 1916, he was at 
Luxeuil with his mates of the American Esca- 
drille. In one of his letters he said that after 
their Nieuports arrived, he learned more about 
flying in five days than he had learned in the 
previous five months. 

Chapman's first letter from the Verdun sector 
was dated May 23, 1916. A month later, to a 
day, he was killed. He wrote few letters in the 
interval, apparently being too busy flying to 
have time to write often. Here is his descrip- 
tion, from a letter dated June 1, of one morn- 
ing's work: 

This morning we all started off at three, 
and, not having made concise enough arrange- 
ments, got separated in the morning mist. I 
found Prince, however, and we went to Douau- 
mont where we found two German reglage ma- 
chines unprotected and fell upon them. A 
skirmish, a spitting of guns, and we drew away. 
It had been badly executed, that manoeuvre ! 
But ho ! another Boche heading for Verdun ! 
Taking the direction stick between my knees I 
tussled and fought with the mitrailleuse and 
finally charged the rouleau, all the while eyeing 



220 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

my Boche and moving across Vaux towards 
Etain. I had no altitude with which to over- 
take him, but a little more speed. So I got 
behind his tail and spit till he dived into his 
own territory. Having lost Norman, I made a 
tour to the Argonne and on the way back saw 
another fat Boche. "No protection machine in 
sight." I swooped, swerved to the right, to the 
left, almost lost, but then came up under his 
lee keel by the stern. (It's the one position 
they cannot shoot from.) I seemed a dory 
alongside a schooner. I pulled up my nose to 
let him have it. Crr — Crr — Crr — a cartridge 
jammed in the barrel. He jumped like a frog 
and fled down to his grounds. Later in the 
morning I made another stroll along the lines. 
Met a flock of Nieuports, and saw across the 
way v a squad of white-winged L. V. G. How 
like a game of prisoner's base it all is ! I scurry 
out in company, and they run away. They 
come into my territory and I being alone, take 
to my heels. They did come after me once 
too ! Faster they are than I, but I had height 
so they could but leer up at me with their dead- 
white wings and black crosses like sharks, and 
they returned to their own domain. 

Under the stimulus of the tremendous con- 
flict going on before Verdun, Chapman fought 
incessantly and fearlessly. In his "With the 
French Flying Corps" Carroll D. Winslow, 
who at the time was near the headquarters of 



FIRST AMERICAN AVIATOR TO FALL 221 

the American Escadrille and saw much of his 
compatriots, describes one incident in Chap- 
man's career: 

I remember one curious incident that oc- 
curred while I was in the Verdun sector. Vic- 
tor Chapman, who was doing combat work 
with the American Escadrille, after a brush 
with four German aeroplanes, was forced to 
descend to our field. Not only had he received 
a bad scalp wound from a bullet, but his ma- 
chine had been riddled and nearly wrecked. 
One bullet had even severed a metal stability 
control. By all the rules of aviation he should 
have lost control of his aeroplane and met with 
a fatal accident. But Chapman was an expert 
pilot. He simply held on to the broken rod 
with one hand, while with the other he steered 
his machine. This needed all the strength at 
his command, but he had the power and the 
skill necessary to bring him safely to earth. A 
surgeon immediately dressed his wound, our 
mechanics repaired his machine. The repairs 
completed, he was off and up again in pursuit 
of some more Boches. I must say that every 
one considered him a remarkable pilot. He was 
absolutely fearless, and always willing and able 
to fly more than was ever required of him. His 
machine was a sieve of patched-up bullet holes. 

Chapman's head was still in bandages when, 
a few days later, he was killed, falling inside 



222 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

the German lines. Clyde Balsley, to whom he 
was taking some oranges when he went to the 
assistance of several of his hard-pressed com- 
panions, had been dangerously wounded and 
was in a near-by hospital. Kiffin Rockwell sent 
to Chapman's stepmother a long letter, which 
appears in the memoir prefixed to Chapman's 
"Letters from France," describing the circum- 
stances attending his fellow flier's last combat. 
In the course of that letter Rockwell wrote: 

The following morning [June 23] the weather 
was good, and he insisted on going out at the 
regular hour with the rest. There were no 
machines over the lines, so the sortie was un- 
eventful. He came in, and at lunch fixed up a 
basket of oranges which he said he would take 
to Balsley. We went up to the field, and Cap- 
tain Thenault, Prince and Lufbery got ready 
to go out and over the lines. Victor put the 
oranges in his machine and said that he would 
follow the others over the lines for a little trip 
and then go and land at the hospital. The 
Captain, Prince and Lufbery started first. On 
arriving at the fines they saw at first two Ger- 
man machines which they dived on. When 
they arrived in the midst of them, they found 
that two or three other German machines had 
arrived also. As the odds were against the 
three, they did not fight long, but immediately 



FIRST AMERICAN AVIATOR TO FALL 223 

started back into our lines and without seeing 
Victor. 

When they came back we thought that 
Victor was at the hospital. But later in the 
afternoon a pilote of a Maurice Farman and his 
passenger sent in a report. The report was 
that they saw three Nieuports attack five Ger- 
man machines, that at this moment they saw 
a fourth Nieuport arriving with all speed who 
dived in the midst of the Germans, that two of 
the Germans dived towards their field and that 
the Nieuport fell through the air no longer con- 
trolled by the pilote. In a fight it is practically 
impossible to tell what the other machines do, 
as everything happens so fast and all one can 
see is the beginning of a fight and then, in a 
few seconds, the end. That fourth Nieuport 
was Victor and, owing to the fact that the 
motor was going at full speed when the machine 
fell, I think that he was killed instantly. 

Chapman was the first American aviator to 
fall in battle. To the French, the fact that a 
young American volunteer of his type had 
made the supreme sacrifice in fighting in defense 
of their cause was of deep significance. "The 
death fight of Victor Chapman," wrote Andre 
Chevillon, "touches our imagination with fire." 
"Never," said M. Jusserand, the French Am- 
bassador to the United States, on Lafayette 



224 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

Day, September 6, 1916 — "Never in my coun- 
try will the American volunteers of the Great 
War be forgotten; some, according to their 
power, offering their pens, or their money, or 
their help to our wounded, or their lives." 
The idealism of which young Chapman was the 
symbol is represented, at the present writing, 
by more than a million and a half of American 
soldiers in France, with hundreds of thousands 
of others preparing to follow them. 



XXIX 

EJFFIN ROCKWELL'S LAST COMBAT 

WHEN Kiffin Rockwell was writing to 
Chapman's parents of his friend Victor's 
last fight, he little thought that in a few weeks 
he too would be out of the great game of war. 
He was a dashing fighter, as appears from Mc- 
Connell's narrative already given of the man- 
ner in which he brought down the American 
Escadrille's first German airplane while flying 
over the Vosges. At Verdun he was severely 
wounded in one of his numerous combats with 
the Germans, an explosive bullet striking his 
wind-shield and tearing several gashes in his 
face. 

Rockwell, however, was no stranger to 
wounds. When in the Foreign Legion he was 
wounded at Carency. Chapman met him at 
the aviation-camp at Avord, and in a letter 
dated September 27, 1915, referred to him as 
follows : 

2S5 



226 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

I find a compatriot I am proud to own 
here. A tall, lanky Kentuckian, called Rock- 
well. He got his transfer about a month ago 
from the Legion. He was wounded on the 
ninth of May, like Kisling. In fact one-half of 
the %me de Marche, 2300, were wounded that 
day, not counting the killed and missing. He 
gives much the best account I have heard. 
Having charged with the third battalion and 
being wounded in the leg on the last bouck, he 
crawled back across the entire field in the 
afternoon. 

By the middle of September, after having 
been in the Verdun sector since May 20, the 
American Escadrille started from Bar-le-Duc, 
as was supposed, for the Paris aviation centre 
at Le Bourget; and the flying men were like a 
lot of schoolboys in anticipation of the holiday 
they were to have. As a matter of fact, they 
were on the way back to Luxeuil near Belfort 
to take part in a great air-raid against the 
Mauser works at Oberndorf. There were ten 
Americans in the party — Lieutenant Thaw, 
w T ith a wounded arm, Adjutants Prince, Hall, 
Lufbery and Masson, and Sergeants Rockwell, 
Hill, Johnson, Rumsey, and Pavelka. McCon- 
nell was in the hospital with a lame back due 



KIFFIN ROCKWELL'S LAST COMBAT 227 

to a smash-up. At Luxeuil they found a great 
force of British aviators, more than fifty pilots, 
and a thousand men as helpers, mechanicians, 
etc. Then followed a long delay while the 
Americans were waiting to receive a new type 
of Nieuport air-ship, more powerful and better- 
armed than the ones they had been using. It 
was of this loafing period that McConnell in 
his "Flying for France" wrote: 

It was about as much like war as a Bryan 
lecture. While I was in the hospital I received 
a letter written at this time from one of the 
boys. I opened it expecting to read of an air 
combat. It informed me that Thaw had caught 
a trout three feet long and that Lufbery had 
picked two baskets of mushrooms. 

At last the new planes arrived. McConnell 
gives the following particulars of Rockwell's 
first flight in his new machine, of his encounter 
with a Boche ship and of its fatal ending: 

Kiffin Rockwell and Lufbery were the first 
to get their new machines ready and on the 
23d of September went out for the first flight 
since the escadrille had arrived at Luxeuil. 
They became separated in the air, but each 
flew on alone, which was a dangerous thing to 



228 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

do in the Alsace sector. . . . Just before Kif- 
fin Rockwell reached the lines he spied a Ger- 
man machine under him, flying at 11,000 feet. 
I can imagine the satisfaction he felt in at last 
catching an enemy plane in our lines. Rock- 
well had fought more combats than the rest of 
us put together, and had shot down many Ger- 
man machines that had fallen in their lines, 
but this was the first time he had had an op- 
portunity of bringing down a Boche in our 
territory. 

A captain, the commandant of an Alsatian 
village, watched the aerial battle through his 
field glasses. He said that Rockwell approached 
so close to the enemy that he thought there 
would be a collision. The German craft, which 
carried two machine guns, had opened a rapid 
fire when Rockwell started his dive. He 
plunged through the stream of lead and only 
when very close to his enemy did he begin 
shooting. For a second it looked as though 
the German was falling, so the captain said, 
but then he saw the French machine turn rap- 
idly nose down, the wings of one side broke off 
and fluttered in the wake of the airplane, which 
hurtled earthward in a rapid drop. It crashed 
into the ground in a small field — a field of 
flowers — a few hundred yards back of the 
trenches. It was not more than two and a 
half miles from the spot where Rockwell, in the 
month of May, brought down his first enemy 
machine. The Germans immediately opened 
up on the wreck with artillery fire. In spite of 



KIFFIN ROCKWELL'S LAST COMBAT 229 

the bursting shrapnel, gunners from a near-by- 
battery rushed out and recovered poor Rock- 
well's broken body. 

Rockwell was a great favorite with his com- 
panions. McConnell paid him this tribute: 

No greater blow could have befallen the 
escadrille. Kiffin was its soul. He was loved 
and looked up to by not only every man in our 
flying corps, but by every one who knew him. 
Kiffin was imbued with the spirit of the cause 
for which he fought, and gave his heart and 
soul to the performance of his duty. He said: 
"I pay my part for Lafayette and Rocham- 
beau," and he gave the fullest measure. The 
old flame of chivalry burned brightly in this 
boy's fine and sensitive being. With his death 
France lost one of her most valuable pilots. 

Rockwell had won the coveted Medaille Mili- 
taire and the Croix de Guerre, on which ap- 
peared four palms, representing the four cita- 
tions he had received in the orders of the 
French Army. For he was officially credited 
with having brought down four enemy airplanes 
and was believed to have accounted for numer- 
ous others that had fallen within the enemy's 
lines. His funeral was a splendid pageant, par- 
ticipated in by every Frenchman in the avia- 



230 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

tion service at Luxeuil, by a battalion of French 
troops, by more than fifty of the British pilots, 
followed by a detachment of five hundred of 
their men; and by the little group of his Ameri- 
can associates. 



XXX 

NORMAN PRINCE KILLED BY AN ACCIDENT 

THREE weeks after Kiffin Rockwell was 
killed Norman Prince, to whose energy 
and persistence, as we have seen, the organiza- 
tion of the Lafayette Escadrille was due, met 
his death by an accident while making a land- 
ing at night. 

A great lover of out-of-door sports, especially 
hunting and polo, Prince was a close student of 
the art of flying long before the war began. 
Born at Pride's Crossing, Massachusetts, he was 
educated at Groton and at Harvard, where he 
was graduated in 1908. After going through 
the Harvard Law School he went to Chicago to 
practise his profession. For recreation he took 
up the study and practice of aviation, then in 
its infancy; and he found this pursuit so much 
more congenial than the law that his avocation 
finally became his vocation, the scientific in- 
vestigation of the construction and control of 
aircraft absorbing practically all of his time. 

231 



232 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

When the war began Prince was thus much 
more familiar with air-ships than were most 
young Americans. His sympathy with the 
cause for which the Allies were fighting, and 
especially his affection and admiration for 
France, prompted him to go abroad early in 
January, 1915, and offer his services to the 
aviation corps of the French Army. They were 
accepted, and he was sent to Pau, where he 
went into training. His previous experience 
with air-ships brought him quickly into active 
service. His intimate letters to members of his 
family, an address which he delivered at the 
Tavern Club, Boston, on the occasion of his last 
visit home on a furlough, in December, 1915, 
and a memoir by George F. Babbitt, are to be 
found in a memorial volume, published in 1917, 
called "Norman Prince: A Volunteer Who Died 
for the Cause He Loved." 

A few paragraphs may be quoted from this 
volume. Writing on September 6, 1915, from 
northern France, near Arras, when he was in a 
French flying corps, Prince said: 

I am happy and in the best of health. I 
sleep under canvas on a stretcher bed and eat 



PRINCE KILLED BY AN ACCIDENT 233 

in the shed of an old farm house near by. I 
have nothing to complain of. I like it. There 
are ten American pilots with us in the French 
service and twelve others in training, with their 
number constantly increasing. Some day soon 
we will all be united in one escadrille — an Esca- 
drille Americaine — that is my fondest ambi- 
tion. I am devoting all my spare energies to 
organizing it, and all the American pilots here 
are giving me every encouragement and assis- 
tance in the work of preliminary organization. 

Here is a selection from Prince's address at 
the Tavern Club, on the Christmas night fol- 
lowing, describing a bombing expedition to the 
railway-station at Douai, as a result of which 
he won his first decoration, the Croix de Guerre: 

I was fortunate enough that day to escape 
the range of the German flying machines by 
going further north and passing through the 
clouds, though I was shelled from a long dis- 
tance all the way. I succeeded in dropping 
my bombs on a railroad station, one of which I 
saw explode in a bunch of freight cars in the 
railroad yard. As I was returning within our 
lines the Englishmen, by mistake, opened a 
brisk fire on me, which necessitated my going 
up into the clouds again. I proceeded due west 
until I ran out of gasoline, and I then descended 
in the dark near the headquarters of the Eng- 
lish. It was my good fortune to land safely, 



234 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

and on my arrival at my post I was brought 
before the English commander, who asked me 
to tell my story. Mine being one of the four 
machines out of twenty that had reached Douai 
in the raid, I was awarded a citation and given 
the right to wear a War Cross — my first deco- 
ration. 

In the same address Prince gave an account 
of a perilous adventure which he had had in 
the midsummer previous, when for a month his 
headquarters were near Nancy: 

During this month in Lorraine I experienced 
the hardest knock I had received up to that 
time. One day six German machines, fully 
equipped, bombarded Nancy and our aviation 
field. To retaliate, my squadron was sent out 
to bombard their field on the same afternoon. 
We started with thirty machines to a designated 
rendezvous, and fifty minutes later, after get- 
ting grouped, we proceeded to our ultimate 
destination. I had a very fast machine, and 
reached the German flying field without being 
hit. When about to let go my bombs and 
while my observer was aiming at the hangars 
of the Germans, my machine was attacked by 
them — one on the left and two on the right. 
I shouted to my observer to drop his bombs, 
which he did, and we immediately straightened 
out for home. While I was on the bank the 
Germans opened fire on me with their machine 



PRINCE KILLED BY AN ACCIDENT 235 

guns, which were even more perilous than their 
shells. 

My motor stopped a few moments after- 
wards. It had given out, and to make matters 
worse, a fourth German machine came at us 
directly in front. My observer, who was an 
excellent shot, let go at him, with the result 
that when last seen this German aeroplane was 
about four hundred feet below and quite out 
of control. The other Germans behind kept 
bothering us. If they had possessed ordinary 
courage they might have got us. Flying with- 
out any motive power compelled me to stand 
my machine on end to keep ahead of them. As 
we were nearing the French lines these Ger- 
mans left us, but immediately batteries from 
another direction opened fire on us. As I was 
barely moving, I made an excellent target. One 
shell burst near enough to put shrapnel in my 
machine. It is marvellous how hard we can be 
hit by shrapnel and have no vital part of our 
equipment injured. I knew I was now over 
the French lines which I must have crossed at 
a height of four hundred metres. I finally 
landed in a field covered with white crosses 
marking the graves of the French and German 
soldiers who had fallen the previous September 
at this point. 

Prince in February, 1916, was training to fly 
the fastest combat air-ship that the French then 
possessed — "quite a different instrument," he 



236 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

says, "from the avion canon, which weighs three 
times more than these small chasing appareils." 
A little later, as has already been pointed out, 
his great ambition was realized in the forma- 
tion of a purely American corps of fighting air- 
planes through which he hoped that more credit 
would redound to the United States than would 
be the case if these American volunteers were 
scattered among the various French aviation 
units. 

He was at Verdun when Chapman was killed. 
Writing under date of June 26, 1916, he said: 

Poor Victor Chapman ! He had been miss- 
ing for a week and we knew there was only a 
very remote chance that he was a prisoner. 
He was of tremendous assistance to me in get- 
ting together the Escadrille. His heart was in 
it to make ours as good as any on the front. 
Victor was as brave as a lion and sometimes he 
was almost too courageous — attacking German 
machines whenever and wherever he saw them, 
regardless of the chances against him. . . . 
Victor was killed while attacking an aeroplane 
that was coming against Lufbery and me. 
Another unaccounted-for German came up and 
brought Victor down while he was endeavoring 
to protect us. A glorious death — face a Vennemi 
and for a great cause and to save a friend ! 



PRINCE KILLED BY AN ACCIDENT 237 

When Prince and his associates of the Ameri- 
can Escadrille returned a little later to Luxeuil 
they found preparations under way for the 
great Allied raid on the Mauser works at Obern- 
dorf. Four of the battle-planes that went out 
on this raid as protection for the bombing ma- 
chines were from the American Escadrille — 
those of Lieutenant de Laage de Mieux, Luf- 
bery, Norman Prince, and Masson. 

The raid was successful in every way, the 
Germans being taken by surprise. In the 
course of it Lufbery downed his fifth enemy 
machine, and thus qualified for the honor of 
being called an "Ace" in flying argot. It was 
when he was returning from this expedition on 
the night of the 12th of October, 1916, that 
Prince met with the accident that resulted a 
few days later in his death. When he was at- 
tempting to make a landing after dark, within 
the French lines, his air-ship struck a wire cable 
and was wrecked. The fall injured him so 
severely that he lived only a few days. Up to 
this time he had been engaged in no fewer than 
one hundred and twenty-two aerial engage- 
ments, and was officially credited with having 



238 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

brought down five Boche planes in battle, and 
was known to have conquered four others not 
officially recorded. He had won, as has been 
noted, the Croix de Guerre and the Medaille 
Militaire; and the Croix de la Legion d'Honneur 
was sent to him as he lay in the hospital. He 
was buried with all military honors. 



XXXI 

JAMES McCONNELL, HISTORIAN 

THE selections already reproduced from 
James R. McConnell's book, "Flying for 
France," must have given the reader a reason- 
ably clear insight into the traits of character 
which endeared the writer of those pages to his 
comrades in the American Escadrille. He may in- 
deed be called the historian of that organization 
during the first eventful six months of its career, 
so vivid are his pen-portraits of his associates 
and so graphic are his descriptions of their life 
on the ground and of their adventures in the 
air. Before entering aviation, as has already 
been noted, he had driven an ambulance in the 
American Ambulance Field Service from Feb- 
ruary to December, 1915, and had contributed 
to the Outlook the best account printed up 
to that time of the experiences of the men 
at Pont-a-Mousson and around Bois-le-Pretre, 
where some of the heaviest fighting of the early 

239 



240 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

part of the war took place. In all of these 
writings McConnell showed that he was en- 
dowed with somewhat of that rare gift which 
Richard Harding Davis possessed to the full, of 
distinguishing clearly between the significant 
and the insignificant in the incidents and events 
of the day's work or play, and of investing de- 
tails with color, life, and interest, and often with 
a charming humor peculiarly American. 

The spirit with which he left his work in 
North Carolina to enter the ambulance service 
in France is indicated in this paragraph from 
the introduction to his book in which the editor, 
"F. C. P.," describes meeting him one day in 
January, 1915, in front of the court house in 
Carthage, when he announced that he was 
leaving on the following Wednesday: 

And then he went on to tell me, first, that, 
as he saw it, the greatest event in history was 
going on right at hand and that he would be 
missing the opportunity of a life-time if he did 
not see it. "These sand hills," he said, "will 
be here forever, but the war won't; and so I'm 
going." Then, as an afterthought, he added: 
"And I'll be of some use, too, not just a sight- 
seer, looking on; that wouldn't be fair." 



JAMES McCONNELL, HISTORIAN 241 

As happened in the case of so many other 
young American volunteers, interest in the war 
as primarily a great adventure was gradually 
replaced in McConnell's mind by an absorbing 
desire to be of substantial assistance to the 
French people, who, it was found, were fighting 
the fight of liberty and justice against enormous 
odds. McConnell's account of the change is 
simple and direct: 

All along I had been convinced that the 
United States ought to aid in the struggle 
against Germany. With that conviction it was 
plainly up to me to do more than drive an am- 
bulance. The more I saw the splendor of the 
fight the French were fighting, the more I began 
to feel like an embusque — what the British call 
a "shirker." So I made up my mind to go into 
aviation. 

McConnell learned to fly at Pau, and qualified 
as a pilot in season to become, as we have al- 
ready seen, one of the original members of the 
Lafayette, or as he preferred to call it, the 
American, Escadrille, who assembled at Luxeuil, 
on the Alsatian front, in the spring of 1916. 
Under date of May 14 he gave, in a private 
letter, these details of his first expedition over 



242 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

the enemy's lines in an avion de chasse, the 
function of which was, in his words, "to shoot 
down Boches or keep them away from our 
lines": 

Well, I've made my first trip over the lines 
and proved a few things to myself. First, I can 
stand high altitudes. I had never been above 
7,000 feet before, nor had I flown more than 
an hour. On my trip to Germany I went to 
14,000 feet and was in air for two hours. I 
wore the fur head-to-foot combination they 
give one and paper gloves under the fur gloves 
you sent me. I was not cold. In a way it 
seemed amusing to be going out knowing as 
little as I do. My mitrailleuse had been 
mounted the night before. I had never fired 
it. Nor did I know the country at all even 
though I'd motored along our lines. I followed 
the others or I surely would have been lost. I 
shall have to make special trips to study the 
land and be able to make it out from my map 
which I carry on board. For one thing the 
weather was hazy and clouds obscured the view. 

When the city of Mulhausen seemed directly 
under him McConnell "noted with keen satis- 
faction their invasion of real German territory." 
"The Rhine, too," he adds, with a touch of 
whimsical humor, "looked delightfully accessi- 
ble." 



JAMES McCONNELL, HISTORIAN 243 

After the squadron was transferred to the 
Verdun front McConnell noted that combats 
occurred on almost every sortie into the enemy 
territory. The Germans, as always, played the 
game cleverly, trusting that the eagerness of 
the young Americans to get into a fight would 
bring them beyond the German lines, where a 
superior force could be brought to bear against 
them. This is exactly what happened again 
and again, and accounted in large part for 
the number of casualties which the Americans 
suffered. "The Bodies," wrote McConnell, 
"keep well within their lines, save occasion- 
ally, and we have to go over and fight them 
there." 

Here is a description of the daily life McCon- 
nell was leading at Verdun from a private letter 
dated July 30: 

Weather has been fine and we've been doing 
a lot of work. Our lieutenant — De Laage de 
Mieux — brought down a Boche. I had another 
beautiful smash-up. Prince and I had stayed 
too long over the lines. Important day, as an 
attack was going on. It was getting dark and 
we could see the tiny balls of fire the infantry 
light to show the low-flying observation ma- 
chines their new positions. On return, as I 



244 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

was over another aviation field my motor 
broke. I made for field. In darkness I couldn't 
judge my distance well and went too far. At 
edge of field there were trees and beyond a deep 
cut where road ran. I was skinning ground at 
170 kilometers [about 100 miles] an hour and 
heading for trees. I saw soldiers running to be 
in at finish and I thought myself that James's 
hash was cooked, but I went between trees and 
ended up head-on on the opposite bank of road. 
My motor took the shock and my belt held me. 
As my tail went up it was cut in two by some 
very low 'phone wires. I wasn't bruised even. 
Took dinner with the officers there, who gave 
me a car to go home in afterward. 

To-day I shared another chap's machine 
(Hill of Peekskill, who knows McCord), and 
got it shot up for him. De Laage, our lieuten- 
ant, and I made a sortie at noon. When in the 
German lines near Cote 304 I saw two Boches 
under me. I picked out the rear chap and 
dove. Fired a few shots and then tried to get 
under his tail and hit him from there. I missed 
and bobbed up alongside of him. Fine for the 
Boche but rotten for me. I could see his gun- 
ner working the mitrailleuse for fair, and felt 
his bullets darn close. I dove, for I could not 
shoot from that position, and beat it. He kept 
plunking away and all together put seven holes 
in my machine. One was only ten inches in 
front of me. De Laage was too far off to get 
to the Boche and ruin him while I was amusing 
him. 



JAMES McCONNELL, HISTORIAN 245 

As the result of a lame back due to another 
sruash-up, McConnell was in the hospital for 
several weeks, rejoining his fellow Americans of 
the Lafayette Escadrille some time after they 
had been transferred from Alsace to the Somme 
front in October. The winter of 1916-17 was 
comparatively quiet on the Somme and in the 
sector from Roye to Soissons. With the early 
spring, however, the activity increased. 

McConnell's last flight took place on March 
19, 1917, only a few weeks before the United 
States declared war against Germany. He 
made this flight in company with Edmond 
Genet, who, having been "at school" all the 
autumn and winter, had joined the American 
squadron a couple of months before. In a let- 
ter to his mother, dated March 20, 1917, as it 
appears in the "War Letters of Edmond Genet," 
McConnell's flying mate wrote: 

We are all feeling decidedly blue because 
our oldest pilot of the escadrille — one of the 
four who were its first members (the other 3 
were Prince, Chapman and Rockwell) — has 
been missing since yesterday morning and un- 
doubtedly is on the other side of the lines — 
either dead or wounded and a prisoner. He is 



246 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

McConnell, the one who wrote such a good 
account of the escadrille which was published 
in World's Work. He and I were out together 
yesterday morning over the new territory just 
captured by the French and English, and about 
ten o'clock, while well inside the enemy lines, 
we encountered two German biplane machines. 
I mounted to attack the nearest and left Mac 
to take care of the second, and it is the last seen 
of him. There were plenty of clouds and mist, 
and after I had finished my scrap with the one 
I attacked, in which I got one of my main upper 
wing-supports cut in half, a guiding-rod cut in 
half, several bullets through my upper wing, 
and half an explosive bullet in the side of my 
left cheek, which stunned me for a moment, I 
went down lower to look for "Mac" and help 
him if he was hard pressed, and looked all 
around and waited for fifteen minutes for him 
to show up, but I could see neither him nor the 
German machine which must have attacked 
him. My upper wing was in great danger of 
breaking off, the support being half cut through, 
my wound was bleeding and pained quite a bit, 
so I finally headed back for camp, hoping Mac 
had perhaps missed me and gone back before 
me. I had a driving wind to face going back 
and had to fly very low to get beneath heavy 
clouds to see my way. 

When I got to ground on our field I looked 
in vain for Mac's machine. When I asked if 
he had returned my worst fears were confirmed. 
He had not, and we have, up to the present 



JAMES McCONNELL, HISTORIAN 247 

time, had absolutely no news of him whatso- 
ever. It's terrible, little Mother. I feel hor- 
ribly over jt, for I was the only one with him. 

A week later Genet was able to report the 
finding of McConnell's body: 

Jim McConnell has just gallantly earned a 
lonely grave out behind the present fighting- 
lines. I wrote to you last Tuesday — the day 
after he and I were out together, when we had 
to return, wounded, without him and with no 
definite news of him. Since then the Germans 
were forced back further and finally French 
troops came across a badly smashed Nieuport 
with the body of a sergeant pilot beside the 
ruins. All identification papers were gone and 

the d d Bodies had even taken off the flying 

clothes and even the boots and left the body 
where it had fallen. The number of the ma- 
chine was sent in and so we knew it was Mac's. 

The following morning, after a flight over 
the lines, I spiralled down over the location 
given and found the wreck — almost unrecogniz- 
able as an aeroplane, crushed into the ground at 
the edge of a shell-torn and wrecked little vil- 
lage. * I circled over it for a few minutes and 
then back to camp to report. Our captain flew 
over that way the same morning to see about 
the body. When he returned he told us about 
the clothes and shoes having been stolen and 
said that Mac had been buried beside the road 
next to which he had fallen. There is no doubt 



248 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

but that he was killed during the combat in the 
air and the machine crashed down full speed to 
the earth. Since that day I've chased two 
Boche machines, but could get up to neither, 
but I'll get one yet and more than one, or be 
dropped myself, to avenge poor Mac. 






XXXII 

GENET IN THE AMERICAN ESCADRILLE 

YOUNG Edmond Genet was very happy 
when, early in June, 1916, he found him- 
self no longer a Legionnaire, but a student at 
the French military aviation school at Buc, not 
far from Paris. "We're treated finely here," he 
wrote to his brother, "have excellent quarters, 
the food is good, and, except for the uniform 
and other personal clothes which we buy our- 
selves, we're fitted out extremely well." The 
future looked very bright to him. "This is 
what one can call the real thing. This is sport 
with all the fascination and excitement and 
sporting chances any live fellow could ever 
wish for." 

Under the stress of war the previous year of 
1915, however, had witnessed such a marvellous 
development, both in the construction of air- 
ships and in the art of controlling them, that a 
much longer time was required than formerly 
to qualify a novice for this increasingly difficult 

249 



250 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

branch of the army service. The consequence 
was that it was not until about the middle of 
the following January, in 1917, that Genet at 
last found himself at the front as a fully quali- 
fied pilote aviateur in the American Escadrille. 
In the meantime, while learning all the tricks 
of the pilot of an avion de chasse, Genet, like his 
fellow compatriots in the different branches of 
the French service, was deeply interested in the 
result of the presidential election in the United 
States, especially in its relation to the war. 
His elation over the early reports of the election 
of Hughes was followed, when later news an- 
nounced that Wilson had been re-elected, by 
hot indignation and a feeling of bitter humilia- 
tion. To a friend he wrote, under date of 
November 15: 

Where has all the old genuine honor and 
patriotism and humane feelings of our country- 
men gone? What are those people, who live 
on their farms in the West, safe from the chances 
of foreign invasion, made of, anyway? They 
decided the election of Mr. Wilson. Don't 
they know anything about the invasion of Bel- 
gium, the submarine warfare against their own 
countrymen and all the other outrages which 
all neutral countries, headed by the United 



GENET IN THE AMERICAN ESCADRILLE 251 

States, should have long ago rose up and sup- 
pressed and which, because of the past admin- 
istration's "peace at any price" attitude have 
been left to increase and increase ? They crave 
for peace, those unthinking, uncaring voters, 
and what's the reason? Why, they're making 
money hand over fist because their country is 
at peace — at peace at the price of its honor and 
respect in the whole civilized world — at peace 
while France and Belgium are being soaked in 
blood by a barbarous invasion — while the very 
citizens of the United States are being murdered 
and those same invaders are laughing behind 
our backs — even in our very faces. ... It 
couldn't be possible for Americans in America 
to feel the same bitter way as Americans over 
here among the very scenes of this war's hor- 
rors. It's not comprehensible over there where 
peace reigns supreme. Come over here and 
you'll be engulfed like the rest of us in the 
realization of the necessity of the whole civilized 
world arming itself against this intrusion of 
utter brutality and militaristic arrogance. . 
Peace — God forbid such happiness until the in-, 
vaders have been victoriously driven back be- 
hind their own borders, knowing the lesson of 
their folly in treading ruthlessly on unoffending 
neutral territory and all the rest of their deeds 
of piracy and the blood of France and Belgium 
has dried up. 

During his period of training Genet met with 
the usual accidents to which students are sub- 



252 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

ject. Once lie fell fifty yards or so in a fifty- 
horse-power Bleriot monoplane, smashing the 
machine to "pieces no larger than matchsticks." 
Being strapped in tightly, however, he escaped 
with only a badly wrenched hip and back. On 
another occasion he turned over completely in 
a Nieuport plane, without the slightest injury 
to himself. For diversion he was able, on one 
of his trips to Paris, to enjoy a performance of 
"Samson et Delila" at the opera. At last, on 
January 20, 1917, he reached the front as a 
member of the Lafayette Escadrille, finding 
himself, oddly enough, in the same neighbor- 
hood where, nearly two years earlier, he had 
begun his service in the Foreign Legion. 

In a letter to his brother Rivers, Genet gave 
this description of his first flight over the lines 
in his new 110 horse-power Nieuport: 

The first morning I flew over the lines I 
went 4,200 metres (about 12,600 ft.) which is 
some altitude for a clear and very cold morning. 
The view was wonderful and just about 500 
metres below and to our right (I was out with 
one of the other fellows) shells fired at us from 
a German anti-aircraft battery were bursting. 
A light covering of snow helped to accentuate 



GENET IN THE AMERICAN ESCADRILLE 253 

the outlines of the ground, the railroad-lines, 
roads, villages, etc. That was one of our ex- 
ceptional clear days though. This is surely no 
kid's game. It's mighty tiring and trying on 
the nerves and one feels it lots at the end of 
each day's flying. One has to keep constantly 
on the alert — and a mighty wide-awake alert 
too. Manoeuvring the machine has practically 
to be done involuntarily — mechanically, I should 
say, and keep all the senses absolutely on the 
alert for the enemy and the course taken. The 
enemy machines drop down behind one with 
blamed suddenness and then there's the devil 
to pay. It's some job ! There isn't a great 
deal of danger of being brought down by shells 
although there have been machines brought 
down that way — mostly with a lot of luck on 
the part of the gunners. Both sides, though, 
do possess some mighty good anti-aircraft bat- 
teries. ' 

Genet made many flights and had several 
combats with German air-ships, on one occasion 
coming very near getting lost in the enemy's 
territory, owing to the thickness of the weather. 
Finally came the expedition with McConnell, 
Genet's description of which has already been 
given. Genet himself was a fatalist and ex- 
pected to meet the same end as that which had 
overtaken Chapman, Rockwell, Prince, and 



254 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

now McConnell. But he faced the probability 
with high courage. "All we ask," he said, "is 
to be able to bring down a few of the enemy 
machines before our turn comes." Genet's last 
letter to his "dear little Mother" was dated 
April 15, a little more than a week after the 
United States declared war against Germany. 
He was killed on the following day while mak- 
ing a sortie over the lines with Lufbery. 

Lufbery's account of his companion's death 
was as follows: 

One afternoon, at half-past two, Genet and 
I were ordered to make a patrol on the lines 
between St. Quentin and La Fere. I was lead- 
ing and everything seemed to be all right. At 
about 3 o'clock somewhere around Moy the 
German anti-aircrafts started to shell us. I 
saw very plainly three shells bursting right 
behind Genet's machine, about one hundred 
yards from it. As we get that very often I did 
not pay much attention to it. Many times I 
myself had been shelled much closer than that 
and nothing had happened. Anyway, I don't 
know if he got hit or not, but he suddenly turned 
around and went toward the French lines. I 
followed him for about three or four minutes 
to make sure that he was taking the right 
direction, after that I went back to the lines 
to finish my patrol duty. There is another 



GENET IN THE AMERICAN ESCADRILLE 255 

thing: Genet that day was not feeling well. He 
went out in the morning for a moment, and 
when he landed he told us that there was some- 
thing wrong with him and went to bed. We did 
not want to let him go to the afternoon sortie, 
but he insisted, saying he was now much better. 

Soldiers who saw him fall say that the ma- 
chine got in a corkscrew dive at about 1,400 
yards high, finally a wing came off and the 
whole thing crashed on the ground. 

I do not know exactly what happened, but 
might suppose that, being ill, he fainted. He 
also might have got wounded by a piece of shell. 

Genet was a nice little fellow and everybody 
in the Escadrille was very fond of him. He 
was very brave and I am sure he would have 
become one of the best. 



In a letter to Paul Rockwell, Sergeant Walter 
Lovell, of Newtonville, Massachusetts, then in 
the American Escadrille, after having been 
graduated, as so many of his fellows were, from 
the American Ambulance service — told of the 
finding of Genet's body at a spot a few miles 
within the French lines and not far from where 
McConnell fell a few weeks earlier. "He had 
fallen with the motor in full speed in the middle 
of the road, which proves that the German shell 
had killed him or rendered him unconscious." 



256 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

He was buried with full military honors at 
Ham. 

Genet is thought to have been the first 
American to be killed after the United States 
entered the war. In accordance with his re- 
quest, his body was wrapped in the French flag, 
and both the French and the American flags 
were placed upon his grave. Finally, it is diffi- 
cult to read dry-eyed these paragraphs from 
Paul Rockwell's letter to the boy's mother: 

I feel a sympathy with you that I cannot 
find words to express, I would have written 
you ere now, but the loss of dear little Edmond 
coming right after that of Jim gave me such a 
feeling of the "blues" that I could not write. 

Anyway we know that Edmond fell for some- 
thing worth while, and that he was so fine an 
idealist he didn't mind dying for the cause. He 
is over there with Kiffin and Jim and the other 
boys and it will not be long until we will be 
with them too. 

I think that one enters eternity with the 
same force and strength that one quits this 
world with, and that one falling in battle in the 
full bloom of youth and energy has a better 
place in the next world than those who linger 
here and die of illness or age. Anyhow I would 
change places with any one of the boys who 
have died so gallantly. 



XXXIII 

MAJOR LUFBERY, ACE OF AMERICAN ACES 

N"0 more romantic career than that of 
Raoul Lufbery, of Wallingford, Connecti- 
cut, world-rover and soldier of fortune, has thus 
far emerged from the turmoil and smoke of the 
great war. That a wanderer for years over the 
face of the earth, born of an American father 
and a French mother, should have finally found 
himself on the bloody fields of France and 
should have won, by his brilliant conquests of 
the Bodies in the air, the three highest honors 
the French could bestow upon him, together 
with the British Military Cross for distinguished 
service, must seem indeed like a fairy-tale. 

Lufbery was born thirty-four years ago in 
Clermont, France, and was brought up after 
he was six, when his mother died, by his mater- 
nal grandmother. Unlike most French boys, 
and owing possibly to his American blood, he 
developed a roving disposition — wanted to see 
the world. So when he was fifteen he ran away 

257 



258 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

and went to Paris. But Paris disappointed 
him — there were too many people and there 
were too few opportunities for quiet meditation, 
of which he was increasingly fond, even at that 
early age. The conventional life did not ap- 
peal to him. 

Then began the wanderings of this Franco- 
American Ulysses. First he sailed to Algiers, 
where, being ill, he went to the hospital. Being 
a likable sort of a fellow, sympathetic by nature 
and deft with his hands, he became, on his re- 
covery, an orderly in the hospital and stayed 
there two years. Speaking of his adaptability 
for army service, his brother Charles said to a 
writer for the New York Sun: 

He was always ready to risk everything, 
and the moment's joy was all he wanted from 
it. Ah, he is splendid for an army ! He could 
dress wounds, or cook or comfort the wounded, 
and do all those simple things which so few 
know how to do at all. He ought to know 
them. He has made his living since he was 
fifteen. 

From Algiers Lufbery wandered to Egypt 
and thence, after many adventures, to Constan- 
tinople, through Roumania and finally to Ger- 



LUFBERY, ACE OF AMERICAN ACES 259 

many, learning, while working in a brewery at 
Fulda, to speak and read German. But he 
wanted to see the rest of the world and to visit 
his own people, his father, his brothers, and his 
half-sisters in New England. So he made his 
way to Hamburg and worked until he had 
money enough to take him to New York. He 
reached Wallingford in 1906, but family ties 
were not strong enough to keep him there per- 
manently. Regular work in a silver factory 
was not to his taste. So, after a year and a 
half, he set forth again, making brief stays in 
New Orleans, where he worked in a bakery, and 
in San Francisco, where he was a waiter in a 
hotel. In 1908 he was in Honolulu and from 
there he went to the Philippines, where he 
served in the United States Army for more than 
a year. In 1911 his people in Wallingford re- 
ceived word from him that he was in Canton, 
China, and had a place in the Imperial Chinese 
customs service. 

While he was in the Far East Lufbery got 
his first taste of aviation and through this ex- 
perience was led to offer his services to the 
French in the war. The circumstances were 



260 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

thus stated by the New York Evening Post in a 
sketch of Lufbery: 

Several years ago he met the aviator, Marc 
Pourpe, in Asia, who trained him as his assis- 
tant. Lufbery discovered for the first time 
that he was an American when he attempted 
to enlist with Pourpe at the outbreak of the 
war, and was rejected on account of his nation- 
ality. He was finally permitted to go to the 
front as Pourpe's mechanic. Pourpe was killed 
soon afterward, and Lufbery importuned the 
French authorities for permission to be trained 
as a pilot, and his request was finally granted. 
He joined the Lafayette Escadrille when it was 
sent to the Verdun sector in May, 1916. 

Before becoming a member of the Lafayette 
Escadrille Lufbery had gone through the usual 
experience of beginners in bombing machines. 
He contributed to Everybody's Magazine for 
February, 1918, a description of one such expe- 
dition in which he took part in January, 1916, 
as the pilot of a 140 horse-power Voisin airplane. 
The fleet consisted of no fewer than forty ships 
and the objective was the Metz-Sablons rail- 
way-station. Lufbery pictured the approach to 
this objective through shrapnel fire, and con- 
tinued as follows: 



LUFBERY, ACE OF AMERICAN ACES 261 

A few minutes later I found myself over the 
spacious station of Metz. This was our objec- 
tive. The machine in front of me executed a 
semi-circle in order to give the slower aeroplanes 
time to come up. Handicapped by my 140 
h. p. I took no part in this manoeuvre, but flew 
straight to the point, where I was the first to 
arrive. 

Our coming must have been announced, as 
several enemy machines came from every direc- 
tion to meet us. One of them advanced toward 
me. Quickly I turned my head to see if my 
observer was on his guard. His machine gun 
was pointed at the enemy, his finger on the 
trigger. At a distance of one hundred and 
fifty metres, the enemy machine made a brisk 
movement to get beyond our range, turning to 
enable its gunner to fire at us. But this ma- 
noeuvre was useless, for the greater number of 
the biplane machines have two guns, one sta- 
tionary, which fires from the front, the other 
mounted on a turret in the rear. 

I kept my eye on my adversary. I could 
clearly see the black painted cross on his fusi- 
lage and helm. The fight began. We ex- 
changed a shower of bullets. The Boche piqued, 
apparently having had enough. I did not think 
it worth my while to follow him, as there was 
nothing now to obstruct our way, and I had 
an important mission to fulfil. 

Through the wind shield I could distinguish 
railroad tracks, trains, stationary and on the 
move, stores of goods, hangars, etc. 



262 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

My observer tapped me on the shoulder and 
signed for me to go ahead. Another tap in- 
formed me that the bombs had been dropped. 
Our mission was accomplished. All that re- 
mained for us to do now was to get back to 
camp as soon as possible. The Boches were 
hurrying up in numbers. We had to keep a 
watch on all sides. We were surprised by a 
monoplane Fokker, which hurled at us a shower 
of bullets and departed before we had time to 
respond. Two or three short, sharp, familiar 
sounds told me that my machine was hit. But 
my motor continued its regular throb, and my 
observer reported that the gasoline tank was 
untouched. 

The wind blowing from the north facilitated 
our return. In a short time we were over our 
lines. Then I laughed, without knowing why. 
I looked at my observer, and he too laughed. 
We were both feeling good. 

Lufbery's skill as a fighting pilot developed 
rapidly after he joined the American Escadrille. 
From that admirable record of the achievements 
of the members of this corps, McConnell's 
"Flying for France," two instances may be 
cited. This relates to a combat over the Ver- 
dun battlefield: 

A pilot seldom has the satisfaction of be- 
holding the result of his bull's-eye bullet. 



LUFBERY, ACE OF AMERICAN ACES 263 

Rarely, so difficult is it to follow the turnings 
and twistings of the dropping 'plane, does he 
see his fallen foe strike the ground. Lufbery's 
last direct hit was an exception, for he followed 
all that took place from a balcony seat. I 
myself was in the "nigger -heaven," so I know. 
We had set out on a sortie together just before 
noon one August day, and for the first time on 
such an occasion had lost each other over the 
lines. Seeing no Germans, I passed my time 
hovering over the French observation machines. 
Lufbery found one, however, and promptly 
brought it down. Just then I chanced to make 
a southward turn, and caught sight of an air- 
plane falling out of the sky into the German 
lines. 

As it turned over, it showed its white belly 
for an instant, then seemed to straighten out, 
and planed downward in big zigzags. The 
pilot must have gripped his controls even in 
death, for his craft did not tumble as most do. 
It passed between my line of vision and a wood, 
into which it disappeared. Just as I was going 
down to find out where it landed, I saw it again 
skimming across a field, and heading straight 
for the brown band beneath me. It was out- 
lined against the shell-racked earth like a tiny 
insect, until just northwest of Fort Douaumont 
it crashed down upon the battlefield. A sheet 
of flame and smoke shot up from the tangled 
wreckage. I watched it burn a moment or two, 
then went back to the observation machines. 

I thought Lufbery would show up and point 



264 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

to where the German had fallen. He failed to 
appear, and I began to be afraid it was he 
whom I had seen come down, instead of an 
enemy. I spent a worried hour before my re- 
turn homeward. After getting back I learned 
that Lufbery was quite safe, having hurried in 
after the fight to report the destruction of his 
adversary before somebody else claimed him, 
which is only too frequently the case. Obser- 
vation posts, however, confirmed Lufbery's 
story, and he was of course very much de- 
lighted. Nevertheless, at luncheon I heard him 
murmuring, half to himself, "Those poor fel- 
lows !" 

Noticing on another occasion during a fight 
with a Boche that a German plane was over 
French territory, Lufbery swooped down near 
his adversary, waved a good-by, which was 
returned, and "whirred off to chase the other 
representative of Kultur." McConnell con- 
tinued: 

He caught up with him and dove to the 
attack, but he was surprised by a German he 
had not seen. Before he could escape three 
bullets entered his motor, two passed through 
the fur-lined combination he wore, another 
ripped open one of his woolen flying boots, his 
airplane was riddled from wing-tip to wing-tip, 
and other bullets cut the elevating plane. Had 



LUFBERY, ACE OF AMERICAN ACES 265 

he not been an exceptional aviator he never 
would have brought safely to earth so badly 
damaged a machine. It was so thoroughly 
shot up that it was junked as being beyond 
repairs. 

Lufbery's conquests in his combats with the 
Germans won for him in quick succession the 
Croix de Guerre, the Medaille Militaire and 
the Croix de la Legion d'Honneur from the 
French, and the Military Cross for Distinguished 
Service from his British associates. On De- 
cember 27, 1917, he wrote in quaint phraseology 
to his brother Charles in Wallingford, as quoted 
in the sketch in the New York Sun already re- 
ferred to, as follows: 

Now, I am looking like a Christmas tree, 
medals all over my chest. The last one I was 
decorated with is a Montenegrin order, with a 
ribbon red, blue and white. Though it has 
not the value of the French Legion of Honor or 
the Military Medal, I am awfully proud to 
wear it." 

You certainly have heard through the 
newspapers about my commission in the Ameri- 
can aviation, but the truth is I have been ap- 
pointed to that rank (Major) a month ago, but 
I cannot wear the uniform yet, as the French 
are still holding my discharge. I 



266 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

I now have sixteen official German machines 
to my credit, and many others unofficial. On 
December 2 I brought two of them down. 

Well, how is everything up at the old Wal- 
lingford? I would like very much to see it 
back again. Unfortunately, I must to give it 
up for the present. For I should like to organ- 
ize some sort of a little flying circus for the 
Germans before I leave here. ' 



Major Lufbery, however, was destined never 
to see "the old Wallingford" "back again." 
For a few months later, on Sunday, May 19, 
1918, he was killed by a fall from his machine, 
which had apparently been set on fire by incen- 
diary bullets from a huge German air-ship, with 
two guns, in a desperate combat over the city 
of Toul. At the time of his death he was offi- 
cially credited with having shot down eighteen 
enemy planes, far and away the most note- 
worthy achievement of any American in the 
aviation service. 

One of those who took part in the military 
funeral of Major Lufbery the next day was a 
fellow aviator, Lieutenant Kenneth P. Culbert, 
who had been graduated at Harvard in the pre- 
vious year. In the middle of a long letter dated 




Copyright by the Committee on Public Information. 

Major Raoul Lufbery. 



LUFBERY, ACE OF AMERICAN ACES 267 

May 21 from Lieutenant Culbert to Professor 
C. T. Copeland, of Cambridge, which was 
printed in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin, ap- 
peared this description of the funeral of Major 
Lufbery : 

Perhaps you'd like to hear of Major Luf- 
bery's funeral — you doubtless know that he was 
shot down, and fell from his burning plane into 
a courtyard. He had done a great deal in 
uniting the French and Americans, — he was the 
greatest of our airmen and seventh on the list 
of French aces, — he had all the qualities of a 
soldier, audacity, utter fearlessness, persistency, 
and tremendous skill, — in every way, sir, he was 
a valuable man. 

As we marched to his interment the sun 
was just sinking behind the mountain that 

rises so abruptly in front of T ; the sky was 

a faultless blue, and the air was heavy with the 
scent of the blossoms on the trees in the sur- 
rounding fields. An American and French 
general led the procession, following close on 
to a band which played the funeral inarch and 
"Nearer My God to Thee" in so beautiful a 
way that I for one could hardly keep my eyes 
dry. Then followed the officers of his squadron 
and of my own — and after us an assorted group 
of Frenchmen famous in the stories of this war, 
American officers of high rank, and two Ameri- 
can companies of infantry, separated by a 
French one. 



268 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

How slowly we seemed to march as we 
went to his grave, passing before crowds of 
American nurses in their clean white uniforms, 
and a throng of patients and French civilians ! 
He was given a full military burial; with the 
salutes of the firing squad, and the two repeti- 
tions of taps, one answering the other from the 

west. General E made a brief address, one 

of the finest talks I have ever heard any man 
give — while throughout all the ceremony French 
and American planes circled the field. In all 
my life I have never heard taps blown so beau- 
tifully as on that afternoon — even some of the 
officers joined the women there in quietly dab- 
bing at their eyes with white handkerchiefs. 
France and United States had truly assembled 
to pay a last tribute to one of their soldiers. 
My only prayer is that somehow through some 
means I can do as much as he for my country 
before I too wander west — if in that direction 
I am to travel. 

On the very next day, as Fate willed it, May 
22, the writer of these words was killed in 
combat, his spirit, one may believe, joining that 
of his comrade Lufbery in the journey "west- 
ward." 



XXXIV 

MAJOR THAW, PIONEER AMERICAN AVIATOR 

THE opening chapter of this book was de- 
voted to some of the experiences of young 
William Thaw, of Yale, in the Foreign Legion. 
Its final chapter shall treat of the exploits in 
the aviation service of France and of the United 
States, of Major William Thaw, of Pittsburgh, 
now four years older than he was when he de- 
cided that this was to be a conflict between 
civilization and barbarism, and that it was up 
to him as a good American to take active part 
in it. At last accounts he was still fighting the 
Bodies, the only survivor over the firing-lines 
of that gallant little band of American volun- 
teers who formed the original Lafayette Esca- 
drille, and the pioneer as well, in the French 
air service, of them all. 

Thaw joined the Legion as the quickest and 
easiest way of getting into the firing-lines. 
But, as we have seen, his experience with this 
branch of the French service was disappointing, 

269 



270 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

and as soon as he was able to pull enough official 
wires he got himself transferred, in December, 
1914, into the French flying service. He was 
not altogether a novice in an air machine, for, 
like Norman Prince, he had done some flying in 
the United States before the war, though not, 
as he admits in one of his letters, over land. 
He returned to the United States on a brief 
furlough in the autumn of 1916; and this visit 
recalled to a writer in the Yale Alumni Weekly 
that at the beginning of his sophomore year 
Thaw had arrived at New Haven in a hydro- 
aeroplane. 

At the end of December, 1914, Thaw was 
at Mervel, attached to Escadrille D 6 of the 
French Aviation Corps as an observer. His 
capacity for this work and his personality evi- 
dently impressed the French officers, and they 
made his pathway easy. The contrast, more- 
over, between his present mode of life and that 
of the trenches made him very contented. 

From the same group of Thaw's letters to his 
family from which quotations have already 
been made — originally published in the Yale 
Alumni Weekly — a few more selections relating 



THAW, HONEER AMERICAN AVIATOR 271 

to this period may be taken. Thus, under date 
of December 28, 1915, he wrote: 

About three or four times a week I have to 
go on little joy-rides in a good machine (we 
have six 80-gnome Deperdussins) with a good 
pilot (two of the six here have won the Legion 
of Honor and two the Military Medal), mark 
the position of German batteries, and regulate 
by means of smoke signals the firing of our 
guns. 

A career as an observer and as a regulator of 
artillery-fire did not, however, satisfy Thaw's 
ambition ; he wanted to fly his own battle-plane ! 
So he schemed and manoeuvred to secure ad- 
mittance to a military training-camp, where he 
could obtain in time a license to fly. Finally, 
in February, 1915, he carried his point and was 
sent to the Reserve of Pilots, as it was called, 
Caudron Division, at Buc. His letter of Feb- 
ruary 14 tells how he evaded being sent to 
school at Pau: 

They wanted to send me to the school at 
Pau, but I know what schools are, so I told 
them that my name was W. Caudron Thaw, 
and finally persuaded them to give me a try. 
I was rather up against it though, as I'd never 



272 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

flown on land, never with a rotary motor, never 
with the propeller in front, and never with that 
control, and at Buc they have nothing but the 
big regulation 80 H. P. machines. But one of 
my favorite mottoes is, "try anything once," 
so the second day I got a ten-minute ride as a 
passenger to get the feel of the machine, and 
since then, in the occasional streaks of fairly 
good weather, I have flown alone twice, and 
the Captain says that I can take the brevet 
militaire the first good day. But that is very 
simple, as they have eliminated the cross- 
country tests, and all you have to do is to stay 
up for one hour at two thousand metres. 

So I hope to be back at the front in two or 
three weeks (and this time with a good job 
instead of being a ditch-digger), probably with 
my old escadrille, which, I believe, is going to 
change to Caudrons. Anyway, the Captain (of 
D. 6) who is ndw at Buc practising, having 
changed from Dep. to Caudron, has asked to 
have me with him, whether he takes the same 
escadrille or not, so I should worry ! 

Under date of April 7 Thaw wrote that the 
French aviation centre had been moved from 
Buc to Bourget, only a few miles from Paris, 
which was easily reached by tram-car. Evi- 
dently he had made good progress, for he said 
that he had been acting as a sort of instructor, 
"teaching green observateurs how to observe." 



THAW, PIONEER AMERICAN AVIATOR 273 

At the time of writing Thaw had just reached 
the front again and was glad to be there: 

The Caudron, though very slow (113 kils.* 
p. h.), is really a remarkable little machine. 
Day before yesterday four of us came over here 
to Luneville, where we are located indefinitely 
on the champ des manoeuvres, about 8 kils. be- 
hind the lines; the other two are coming over 
later. ... It is interesting to note that al- 
though I am supposed here to be a pretty good 
pilote, it was my first cross-country flight. And 
it certainly is sport sailing along through the 
clouds, steering by map and compass. 

Under date of April 18 Thaw wrote of his 
first meeting with a German "Taube": 

Another short letter, just to say "Hello" 
and "tout va bien." — The past few days since I 
wrote you have passed very quickly — just 
enough work to seem to be busy, and very, 
very interesting work at that. Have made six 
reconnaissances to date, and to-morrow morning 
I do my first regulating of artillery fire, having 
tried out my wireless to-day. Have so far 
flown about 1200 kils.f over German territory, 
and have more than once brought back fairly 
important information. So, as I said before, 
it certainly feels great to be really doing some- 

* About 70 miles per hour. 
f Approximately 750 miles. 



274 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

thing. — Met my first and only "Taube" last 
Thursday morning, and, believe me, I was 
scared. But so was he and beat it straight 
down, much to my relief, as we were 40 kils. 
from our lines. — Every day something new, 
something exciting. It's a great life. . . . 

McConnell notes that during the autumn of 
1915 Thaw was doing excellent work at the 
front as the pilot of a Caudron biplane carrying 
an observer. During the autumn and winter, 
however, he was co-operating heartily with Nor- 
man Prince and Elliott Cowdin in their efforts 
to persuade the French authorities to allow them 
to form a purely American flying squadron. 

When, late in the winter, the project seemed 
likely to succeed, Thaw is found elaborately 
planning to have Captain Thenault appointed 
to the command of the new squadron. Thus in 
a letter dated February 21, 1916, Victor Chap- 
man wrote: 

Now we must have a French Captain. But 
first, as to the people who are running this. 
They are, of course, the three you know — Thaw, 
Cowdin and Prince. Thaw, though the young- 
est, has perhaps more weight, being a sows- 
Lieutenant. Thaw wants his old chief at 
his Caudron Escadrille, Capitaine Thenault, 



THAW, PIONEER AMERICAN AVIATOR 275 

a charming fellow, but young. Balsan, after 
being asked to look into the matter, gave some 
uncertain answer. Thaw wants him if it's 
physically possible. Meanwhile we wait, and if 
nothing is done, we greatly fear that Thenault 
may be definitely refused us and some "ser- 
vice" Capitaine be dumped upon us to make 
our life unpleasant. 



Thaw as usual carried his point: Captain 
Thenault was put in command of the Lafayette 
Escadrille, with Lieutenant de Laage de Mieux 
second in command. A year later Edmond 
Genet, in one of his letters describing the Amer- 
ican Escadrille as it then was, wrote of The- 
nault: 

We have a very pleasant captain of the esca- 
drille, and the lieutenant (de Laage) is a dandy 
fellow. Of course, Thaw, who is a lieutenant, 
looks out for us a good deal, but de Laage is 
our regular lieutenant. Both he and the cap- 
tain speak English — particularly de Laage. We 
all eat together in one mess, and our cook is an 
Al man. 

Thaw and Cowdin had become expert fight- 
ing pilots before the Lafayette Escadrille was 
finally assembled on the Alsatian front in May, 



276 AMERICAN VOLUNTEER AIRMEN 

1916, and had seen service at Verdun, where 
Cowdin had brought down a German machine, 
and by so doing had become the first American 
to win the Medaille Militaire — "the highest 
decoration," McConnell calls it, "that can be 
awarded a non-commissioned officer or private." 
Almost before the members of the squadron had 
got settled at Bar-le-Duc, after the transfer 
from the Alsatian front, Thaw brought down a 
Fokker one morning. In the afternoon of the 
same day, however, in a big combat far behind 
the German lines, he was wounded in the arm. 
His wound bled profusely, but he succeeded in 
landing just within the French lines, although 
in a dazed condition. French soldiers carried 
him, too weak to walk, to a field dressing- 
station, and from there he was sent to a Paris 
hospital. On his recovery he rejoined the 
American Escadrille. 

The latest information concerning him was 
in a news despatch dated April 24, 1918, which 
stated that Major Thaw — like Lufbery, he had 
been taken into the aviation service of the 
United States Army with the rank of major — 
commanding the Lafayette Escadrille, had just 



THAW, PIONEER AMERICAN AVIATOR 277 

brought down his fifth enemy plane and a cap- 
tive balloon on the same day, and that he was 
thenceforth to be classed among the "aces" in 
aviation in France. Long may he live to fly ! 



INDEX 



Ahern, Dr. William P., with Red 

Cross, 95. 
Andrew, A. Piatt, in ambulance 

service, 129-133. 
Andrews, Philip, in Coldstream 

Guards, 90. 
Archer, William, 65. 
Arrowsmith, Robert, with Com- * 

mittee for Relief in Belgium, 

196. 

Bach, James, in Foreign Legion, 

24. 
Balsley, Clyde, in aviation, 214, 

222. | 

Barber, William M., in ambulance 

service, 133, 154-156. 
Bastados, in Foreign Legion, 30. 
Boligny, Edwin, in Foreign Legion, 

24. 
Bostwick, Elmore McNeill, in 

ambulance service, 157. 
Buswell, Leslie, in ambulance 

service, 140, 143-147. 
Butler, Ethan Flagg, with Red 

Cross, 99-101, 103-104. 

. . - -/■ 

Campbell, Donald, in Foreign ' 
Legion, 29. > 

Capdevielle, in Foreign Legion, 
24. 

Carey, J. J., in Foreign Legion, 
24. 

Chapman, Victor, 14, 57; in For- 
eign Legion, 66-71 ; in aviation, 
209, 213, 214, 217-224, 236, 245, 
253. 



Clyde, W. P., in ambulance ser- 
vice, 159-160. 

Covalieros, in Foreign Legion, 33. 

Cowdin, Elliot C, in aviation, 207- 
209, 213, 218, 274, 275. 

Culbert, Kenneth P., in aviation, 
266-268. 

Curtis, Edward D., with Com- 
mittee for Relief in Belgium, 
186, 187, 190-191, 192, 196. 

Delpenche, in Foreign Legion, 24. 

Donovan, Dr. James C, with Red 
Cross, 95. 

Dowd, Dennis, in Foreign Legion, 
. 24. 

Downer, Dr. Earl B., with Red 
Cross, 103, 104. 

Drummond-Hay, Colonel, in Cold- 
stream Guards, 91. 

Elliott, General George F., 77. 
Engler, in Foreign Legion, 29. 
Evans, Frank E., 78. 

Farnsworth, Henry, 13, in Foreign 

Legion, 27, 36, 57, 71, 119. 
Fletcher, Horace, in Belgium, 188. 

Gailor, Frank Hoyt, in ambulance 

service, 148-151. 
Genet, Edmond, 14, in Foreign 

Legion, 37-49; in aviation, 245, 

249-256, 275. 
Gibson, Hugh, 190. 
Gray, Prentiss, with Committee 

for Relief in Belgium, 197. 



279 



280 



INDEX 



Gregory, Warren, with Committee 
for Relief in Belgium, 197. 

Hall, B. S., in Foreign Legion, 24. 
Hall, Bert, in aviation, 209, 213. 
Hall, Louis, 137. 
Hall, Richard, in Ambulance 

Corps, 133, 135-138. 
Harjes, H. Herman, 158. 
Hath, in Foreign Legion, 29. 
Haupt, George H., in ambulance 

service, 157. 
Hill, Dudley, in aviation, 214, 244. 
Hill, Lovering, in ambulance ser- 
vice, 161-162. 
Hollinshed, in ambulance service, 

125. 
Hoover, Herbert, with Committee 

for Relief in Belgium, 175-180, 

189. 
Huskier, in Foreign Legion 12; in 

ambulance service, 125. 

Imbrie, Andrew C, 79. 

Jennings, in ambulance service, 

137. 
Johnson, Chonteau, in aviation, 

214. 

Kelley, Edward J., in Ambulance 
Corps, 133. 

Kellogg, Prof. Vernon, in Belgium, 
176, 181-182, 200-202. 

King, Clapham P., with Red 
Cross, 99. 

King, David W., in Foreign 
Legion, 24, 25, 71. 

Kirby-Smith, Dr. Raymond M., 
with Red Cross, 103, 104. 

Kittredge, Tracy P., with Com- 
mittee for Relief in Belgium, 196. 

Kohn, in Foreign Legion, 70. 

Lane, Morton P., with Red Cross, 



Lawrence, Richard, in ambulance 
service, 161. 

Leach, Dr. Charles N., with Com- 
mittee for Relief in Belgium, 
196. 

Lebrun, Corporal, in Foreign Le- 
gion, 29. 

Lipton, Sir Thomas, with Red 
Cross, 102. 

Long, John D., 77. 

Lovell, Walter, in aviation, 255. 

Lufbery, Raoul, in aviation, 213, 
222, 254. 

Lumsden, D., in Black Watch, 80. 

Lytle, Richard R., with Committee 
for Relief in Belgium, 192, 194. 

MacCreery, Lawrence, in ambu- 
lance service, 125. 

McConnell, James P., in Amer- 
ican field ambulance service, 
140-143; in aviation, 209, 210- 
216, 239-248, 262, 264. 

McCord, in aviation, 244. 

Magruder, Dr. Ernest P., with Red 
Cross, 99, 102. 

Masson, Didier, in aviation, 214. 

Matter, in ambulance service, 137. 

Maurice, Arthur Bartlett, with 
Committee for Relief in Bel- 
gium, 195-199. 

Maverick, Robert V., with Cum- 

[fc mittee for Relief in Belgium, 
196. 

Mignot, 144-147. 

Mitchell, Clarence V. S., in ambu- 
lance service, 165-171. 

Morlae, E., 13, 19; in Foreign 
Legion, 37-49. 

Morrison, H. D., Secretary, Amer- 
ican Ambulance Corps, 132. 

Mortens, in Foreign Legion, 33. 

Mussorgsky, in Foreign Legion, 



INDEX 



281 



Nicolet, in Foreign Legion, 33. 

Norton, Richard, head of Ambu- 
lance Corps, 115-128, 130, 131, 
159. 

Oakman, Walter G., in Coldstream 

Guards, 88. 
Ogilvie, Francis D., 146. 
Oiilinger, in Foreign Legion, 24. 

Paradise, Scott Hurtt, with Com- 
mittee for Relief in Belgium, 187. 

Phelizot, in Foreign Legion, 24. 

Pierce, Waldo, 135. 

Poe, John Prentiss, in First Black 
Watch, 75-82, 85. 

Prince, Norman, in aviation, 207- 
208, 209, 222, 231-238, 243, 245, 
253, 274. 

Rainey, Paul, in ambulance ser- 
vice, 167. 

Rockwell, Kiffin, in aviation, 209, 
213, 214, 215-216, 222, 225-230, 
245, 253. 

Rumsey, Lawrence, in aviation, 
214. 

Ryan, Dr. Edward W., with Red 
Cross, 95-98, 102, 104. 

Salisbury, Edward Van D., in am- 
bulance service, 139. 

Sanders, Roswell S., in ambulance 
service, 133, 156. 

Scanlon, Bob, in Foreign Legion, 
24. 

Schroder, Bernard N. P., in am- 
bulance service, 144, 145. 

Seeger, Alan, 9, in Foreign Legion, 
24, 50-65, 71. 

Sperry, William EL, with Com- 
mittee for Relief in Belgium, 
196, 198. 

Starr, Dillwyn P., in Coldstream 
Guards, 83-91. 



Stockton, Gilchrist, with Commit- 
tee for Relief in Belgium, 192, 
193. 

Strong, Dr. Richard P., with Red 
Cross, 106-112. 

Stuart, Dr. Edward, with Red 
Cross, 107. 

Subiron, Bob, in Foreign Legion, 
24. 

Suckley, Henry M., in ambulance 
service, 133, 161-164. 

Sudic, in Foreign Legion, 33. 

Sukuna, in Foreign Legion, 29, 33. 

Thaw, William, in Foreign Legion, 
14-20, 24; in aviation, 209, 213, 
214, 269-277. 

Trinkard, in Foreign Legion, 24. 

Tuck, William II., with Committee 
for Relief in Belgium, 192, 194. 

Uhlin, in Foreign Legion, 29, 30. 

Ware, Gordon, in ambulance ser- 
vice, 163, 164. 

Warren, Robert H., with Commit- 
tee for Relief in Belgium, 187. 

Wendell, in ambulance service, 
125. 

Wheeler, David E., in Foreign 
Legion, 42, 47, 48, 49. 

Wheeler, Walter H., in ambulance 
service, 154-156. 

Wickes, Francis C, with Com- 
mittee for Relief in Belgium, 196. 

Winslow, Carroll D., in aviation, 
220. 

Zampanedes, in Foreign Legion, 

32. 
Zinn, F. W., in Foreign Legion, 

25. 
Zinn, Wilhelm, in Foreign Legion, 

25. 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

CAUSES AND EFFECTS IN 
AMERICAN HISTORY 

THE STORY OF THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATION 

By EDWIN W. MORSE 

With 47 full-page illustrations, facsimiles, and maps. 12mo 

$1.25 net 
CONTENTS 

I. DISCOVERERS 

II. EXPLORERS,, AND CONQUERORS 

III. COLONISTS 

IV. NEW FRANCE IN AMERICA 
V. GROWTH OF THE COLONIES 

VI. RESISTANCE TO BRITISH TYRANNY 

VII. INDEPENDENCE BY REVOLUTION 

VIII. THIRTEEN JEALOUS STATES 

IX. UNION UNDER THE CONSTITUTION 

X. AN ERA OF EXPANSION 

XI. THE WAR OF 1812 AND ITS CAUSES 

XII. INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

XIII. HIGH TIDE OF AMERICAN COMMERCE 

XTV. GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN LETTERS 

XV. SLAVERY AND SECESSION 

XVI. CIVIL WAR 

XVII. RECONSTRUCTION AND CORRUPTION 

XVIII. POLITICAL AND INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS 

XEX. BUSINESS EXPANSION AND IMPERL4LISM 

XX. LITERATURE, FINE ARTS, AND EDUCATION 

XXI. SOURCES OF THE NATION'S WEALTH 

Royal Cortissoz, in the New York Tribune : 

"This little book of scarce 300 pages presents a re- 
markably full and concise view of American history. 
The author understands the art of omission. Moving 
with really surprising rapidity across an immense tract, 



from the migration of the Northmen to the country as it 
exists to-day, he brings into his narrative only the great 
landmarks. From Mr. Morse's book the reader may in 
a couple of hours learn not only how the country has 
passed through this or that crisis, but why, and in the 
process he may apprehend not only events but person- 
alities. The great figures concerned in the making of the 
United States stay only for a moment upon the scene, but 
they are justly characterized and often vividly portrayed." 

Edward Gary, in the New York Times : 

"Mr. Morse has written about the history of the 
United States on lines which, if not wholly novel, are 
relatively so; lines that are difficult to follow, but, in his 
volume, lead to extremely useful results. His method 
may be called explanatory. He gives, necessarily, the 
facts as to the general evolution of the nation, but his aim 
is not so much narrative as elucidation; he seeks to show 
not only how events occurred, but why, and what, 
broadly, were their relations to others, contemporary, 
preceding, or following. Obviously in such a task the 
first requisite is a sound perspective. This in a volume 
of less than 300 pages, covering the course of three cen- 
turies and more, is very hard to get. Mr. Morse seems 
to us in a very remarkable degree to have attained it. . . . 
Throughout, his compact little volume is marked by 
singular fairness on the one hand and sound judgment on 
the other, and by what we venture to define as very un- 
usual common sense. There is not in it a line of preach- 
ing or of posing. And it is written in a style of great 
simplicity, clarity, and animated sobriety." 

The Harvard Graduates' Magazine : 

" Sound and clear would be a fair verdict on his work. It 
would be difficult to name any other general survey of less 
than 60,000 words which contains as much of the pith of 
American history as Mr. Morse has packed into his read- 
able little volume." 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, NEW YORK 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



020 914 093 7 



